


Remember How He Needed Us?

by pennywife



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Richie Tozier, Blood and Torture, Body Horror, Cheating, Disturbing Themes, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Explicit Sexual Content, Gore, Jealousy, Love Triangles, Manipulation, Marriage, Miscarriage, Multi, Pain, Pennywise (IT) Being an Asshole, Richie Tozier Being an Asshole, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Surgery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-02-13 04:28:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21488353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennywife/pseuds/pennywife
Summary: Richie may not hold you the way that you want to be held, but you’d die out there if he ever set you free.
Relationships: Pennywise (IT)/Reader, Pennywise/Richie Tozier, Richie Tozier/Reader
Comments: 42
Kudos: 113





	1. Pretty Little Dove

**Author's Note:**

> Ahoy! Triggering content ahead! Don’t skip these tags, folks! Cheating, cosmetic surgery, miscarriage, alcoholism, and self-harm are going to play major themes in this fic and if you hated my other reader-characters then boy are you not gonna like this one lmao! Everyone in this fic is gonna be extremely selfish and flawed because daz what I like to write!

This is your second glass of wine before the sun is even up, and if you didn’t have to drive soon you’d have already emptied the bottle. Richie says he doesn’t like it when you drink this much during the day, but the truth of it is that he doesn’t actually care. All you really are to him is just another punchline, a thing that’s sure to draw out laughs at the end of one of his shows. You’re the alcoholic wife who cries at night and burns through all of his money; but he’ll never once make an effort to try and stop you. As long as you’re still thin, and beautiful, and lucid enough to hold him by the crook of his arm when he takes you outside; Richie couldn’t care less what you have to do to fill up your days.  
  
You’re supposed to meet Stacy in twenty minutes. You should be gathering up your things and picking out your favorite handle of vodka to take along with you, but all you’ve done for the past hour is stare at yourself in the mirror. Hem of your dress clenched tight between your teeth, you stand and you bore at your still-swollen stomach until it feels like your corneas are going to open up and bleed down over your cheeks. What was once toned and pristine is now littered with angry violet stripes, and no matter how hard you squint you can’t seem to make them go away. 

It’s alright though. By tomorrow morning you’ll be as good as new, like a perfect doll ripped right out of the box. The doctors will cut you hip bone to hip bone, and once you’re back to the way that you were you’ll have a pretty white scar to obsess about in the mornings instead of skin that ripped when it couldn’t be stretched any further. 

Five months— that was it. Your mother carried two pregnancies to term, and neither of them left behind a single fucking _ mark. _

Richie says he doesn’t mind them, but you don’t really think that that’s true. He never wraps his arms around your waist like he used to, never runs his tongue up between your breasts and fucks you like he did in the beginning. A bolt of anger strikes at your heart, blistering hot, just another emotion you can’t seem to understand and you bite yourself on the inside of your wrists so that Richie can’t see; hard enough to hurt, but never enough that it leaves a scar. 

He hardly ever even touches you at all anymore, and the thought of him leaving you only makes that gaping pit in your heart grow blacker every day. You wonder who he thinks about when he closes his eyes, and you torture yourself over the crowds of women who throw themselves at his feet. He’s just so goddamn _perfect_, the celebrity husband that a girl like you could have only ever dreamed about having before. You just want him to hold you again, the way that he used to when you were perfect too. You want him to take you into his strong pale arms, and tell you that he isn’t going to leave you for someone a little more beautiful. 

A tear stings at the inner corner of your eye, sadness so loud it sounds like the rushing of water against your eardrums. He’s still asleep— right now, back in the bedroom upstairs. You could cancel your plans and curl up to his side beneath the silk of your sheets, begging him not to scoff and turn you away again. You could scream if you remembered how. You could empty your lungs and tell him that this is a torture you wouldn’t wish on _ anyone _ who knows what it feels like to be so in love it makes them vomit, and he’d stare at you behind the frames of his glasses as if you were speaking another language. It doesn’t work. It never works. It never works and you’ll never get sick enough of it to leave. You’re a pretty little dove in an opulent cage who cannot peck the hand who feeds her. Richie may not hold you the way that you want to be held, but you’d die out there if he ever set you free. 

The tips of your nails drag over your hips when you pull your dress back down to hide your body. A dampened stain marks the place where it’d been bitten in your mouth, a darker gray than the rest of the fabric, but there’s not enough time to dry it before you leave. You dump the remnants of your glass down into the sink and stuff it deep into the cabinet below, and head back out into the blinding light of the foyer. 

You always read about the healing power of light, and how sterility and cleanliness somehow make you a better person than everyone else, but it doesn’t feel right anymore. The virginal white of your walls has become nauseating, a sore to the eyes before you pull your sunglasses down over your face to shield them. Two years you and your husband have been in this house, and if you left right now there wouldn’t be a single sign that you were ever really even here. 

A steady vibration comes to life in your purse, probably just a call from Stacy to bitch about how late you are already. You don't pick up because you don’t care enough to, but were it not for you digging around between the silk-lined leather you wouldn’t have realized you’d forgotten your keys. 

They must still be upstairs, resting back on the nightstand by your side of the bed. You hiss and curse at the haze of the wine for making you so forgetful, and pray to God that Richie won’t wake up to the clacking of your heels against the marble of the steps. The last thing you need right now is another reason for him to resent you. That’s why when you finally turn the knob of the master bedroom’s door, you do it as quietly as you’ve ever done anything in your life. 

Your father died when you were just a child, a drunken car-accident that you were never allowed to ask about. A little girl at school told you his body had been obliterated by the force of the crash, that his bones had crumpled like eggshells and that is why you weren’t able to have an open casket at the funeral; but you remember enough about when he was alive to wipe out the horror of his death. You remember Sunday mornings and Thanksgiving dinners, and you even remember that there was once a night when you both shared the same exact dream. It had been at an aquarium the two of you had never been to, and when you’d woken up you could both recall the conversations you had together while you were there. It was almost like magic, like something you’d swear was a lie if it hadn’t happened to you; but you’re as sure as you are every other memory you have with him that that one was real. 

It’s for this reason that when you see the clown bracketing Richie’s body on his hands and knees at the end of the bed, you’re certain that’s what has to be happening again now. This is only a nightmare, one you’ve managed to walk yourself inside of without any intent of doing so. 

An inhuman tongue slithers out from behind sickly yellowed teeth to trace a vein in your husband’s throat, dripping wet when Richie drops the side of his face down onto the bed to rest. You know the mouth that it belongs to without ever having seen it before, as if all those stories of a clown who’d frightened him as a child had been sewn into your head without your permission, as if you’d lived it yourself instead of all of his friends in those days back in Derry. The talons on its hands that pierce into soft pink flesh, the black of its eyelids when it sounds out a purr; you’ve seen them before, you must have. 

The mattress squeaks. It almost sounds like dozens of tiny rats, filling up your eardrums with their chittering until you can’t even remember the sound of your own thoughts. The clown moves into your husband, fucking him slowly, taking him in a way that you’re certain cannot be real. This is all just another practice in self-torture, a trap set by your own conscious to watch you squirm and wither in pain. 

This is not really happening. You are not really here. 

Time passes like a glacier through saltwater, and no matter how hard you fight it you cannot seem to try and look away. Every muscle in your body has turned to rusted iron. Vomit sours your stomach, blood at the roof of your mouth; but you stay and you stand and you watch. Through the surreality you fight for reason, and your hands come up empty each time you try. It makes no sense in this world for the love of your life to be on his hands and knees for the thing that wakes him in the night screaming, and you don’t know what to do with any of this besides wait for it to be over. 

The cotton over the clown’s hands, which had only a moment ago been taloned and dark, slide up and down the curve of Richie’s back. It’s close now; you can see it in the way its jaw slackens, in the way its thrusts turn so languid and deep. Your husband’s eyes are hidden by his curls, but you’re sure that if they weren’t you’d see them squeezed tight together in ecstasy. He fists his cock in his hand until he’s spilling onto the sheets, until the clown halts and digs its nails so deep into his sides that blood drips from the wounds. The scent hits your nostrils like a razor, the metal tang of iron on your tongue. It fills up your eyes, until you can’t even move, can’t even breathe; and you realize, with horror, that this was never really a dream at all. 

“Oh my God.” You whimper, and the voice that comes out of you doesn’t sound like your own. “Oh— Oh my God this is— This is real.” 

The clown stops. It’s like all the air has been sucked out of the room, leaving nothing behind but horror and cold. It crumples in on itself before it turns its head to look at you through the gap in the doorway, and you watch the slit of its pupils shrink when it registers your presence. An animal, you think, as its face twists up with fury and alarm. An animal, or maybe even a monster; but it slips out of your husband when he rips himself away as if it’s been here a thousand times before. A lover, you realize, and the thought makes you sick. 

Lovers, losers, lovers. 

Richie rips the blankets off to cover himself and lunges off of the bed, reaching out to you and spilling out an unending string of, “I love you I’m sorry I can explain I love you this isn’t what it looks like I love you I love you oh God Pennywise this isn’t I can just—“

The curve of your spine slams into the hallway behind you, knocking down a painting from the force of it. Adrenaline sizzles in your veins, turning your blood to ash with every deafening beat of your heart. Not once does Pennywise move an inch from where it crouches at the foot of the mattress, but it isn’t the clown you’re running away from when you flee for the stairs. 

Terror fuels you. Terror, and the overwhelming urge to break free from this house. You’re rushing down the steps so fast that you’re sure you’re going to fall, going to trip and break your neck just trying to get out through the front door. The sound of Richie rushing after you slows to a stop, and in the distance you can hear an inhuman voice hissing something that you can’t understand. 

Perhaps it’s telling him to kill you to keep you from telling anyone else about what you’ve seen. 

Perhaps it’s telling him you’re not worth running after anyway. 


	2. Always Vodka

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You run to meet your best friend, Stacy, to try and temporarily escape the horror of what you’ve just seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey what’s up guys here’s the part where I try and warn you about stuff so you don’t get too blindsided while reading. Reader is... an odd woman. Her way of thinking and her actions are really irrational, especially here; and her body-issues, self-harm, and ESPECIALLY her alcoholism are major themes here. Unhealthy marriages and cheating are discussed— There’s also an OC in this chapter who is dealing with some of the things that Reader is as well. It can be triggering to read about disturbing events/behaviors from the eyes of a character who normalizes these things, so that’s why this is getting so longwinded. Richie’s sexual orientation is also briefly discussed/worried over, and there’s honestly probably a lot more triggering stuff that I’m completely forgetting to warn you about... Really just wanna remind you that this is a strange and extremely dark fic, and you really don’t have to read this if it isn’t your cup of tea.

You’ve never much minded the taste of blood. 

There are so many things in this world that have always wanted to draw it out from you, wanted to see it run red when you stood in their way. The fangs from the dog Richie bought you last spring, a metal tray to the nose when you just couldn’t find a way to fit in with the girls at your school. All those scalpels and razors and saline-filled syringes, asphalt to the hands and knees and teeth clamped down hard at the base of your thumb. The pain cuts through the humiliation like a scythe through tall grass, and just like always, you don’t let go until you taste the iron of it again on your tongue. 

Just keep thinking about blood, and maybe then you’ll stop seeing the way Richie’s eyes had fluttered when that thing rutted into him from behind. 

“Idiot!” You curse yourself, and it strikes you again, the memory so disturbing it hits you like a blow to the spine; and for a brief moment you decide you want to kill it. You want to reach into its chest and snuff out the light of its soul in your hand like the dying of a star, but you know that you can’t, and even just picturing its face in your head has you running faster on the sidewalk with your forearms pulled tight towards your chest. In every single windowpane of every store you flee past, you expect to see the reflection of its jackal mouth snarling after you— hunting you down like prey in the streets. 

“It feeds on your fear,” Richie had told you, once when these were all just stories and nightmares from a life before he left Maine. “It knows what you’re afraid of, more than anything else, and it… _ uses _ those fears to try and hurt you.” 

A beast that subsists on terror and flesh; tiny voices crying out for their mothers beneath the earth. There isn’t much in this world that frightens you to your core, but when that monster slithered into your home it wasn’t your fear it had ravaged. It was your _ love. _

That vile and venomous creature from a world beyond your own; does it love him like you do? Is it even capable of doing so? Does it even know _ how? _

You cannot imagine how any of this could have started, how such a twisted affair could have ever come to be. The Richard you married may not have been the man you’d fallen in love with, but he certainly would have never done _ this. _All that talk of a family and children of your own, and now he beds a monster who eats of their flesh and drinks of their blood like wine.

The sun dips behind a stray cloud as you veer around the corner. The fading of the light makes your throat feel dry and tight, anxiety clawing at your chest. You remember the rules, and know well the unfathomable extent of what the clown is able to do, and it’s for this reason that you can’t help but wonder if the sudden darkening of the sky is a warning. What you uncovered, the secret you witnessed that you were never meant to know; would it not do it well to simply just kill you? To slaughter you, so that you’ll never be able to interfere with it again? 

And what of Richie? He hasn’t called you, isn’t running after you down the streets and begging you not to go. Is he on his way to find you, to rip you back by the bend if your arm and assure you it all was a dream? Is he back at your home, waiting patiently for you to come running back into his repentant arms? Lastly, though the thought doesn’t feel quite like your own when it races across the width of your mind; _ is he busy letting Pennywise fuck him again? _

Vile! Those words sour your stomach, have you choking down on a gag as you cross through the parking lot towards the rear end of Stacy’s luxurious car. They all feel filthy, foreign; like a bruise at the back of your head that you can’t for the life of you ever remember getting. The wine from this morning does nothing to dull the brunt of it, and thus, you have something more urgent to worry about now than your famous husband breaking his vows. 

Stacy hardly even glances at you when you pull open the handle to the passenger-side door. Her eyes are glued to the screen of her phone, her legs pulled up into a w-shape beside herself on either side of the steering wheel. There’s an unopened bottle of Grey Goose in her hands, but under the scent of fresh leather and floral perfume, you can tell she’s already been drinking something else since long before you even left your house. 

The lock-button to her phone clicks under her thumb, and at last she shifts towards you to quirk an immaculately-plucked brow. 

“You uh, gonna get in here, or…?” 

Stacy trails off with the drumming of her nails on the steering wheel, and when her eyes catch the fresh bite-wound on your hand she doesn’t say a word. She simply frowns for a moment, and instead turns her attention back on the liquid sloshing back and forth behind the glass of the bottle. 

You’d like nothing more than to drop to your knees out in the parking lot and scream until your lungs turn black with mourning, but the desperate need for more liquor deafens the horror of what you’d witnessed back inside of your home. It takes you a moment to climb up into the seat with your buckling limbs, but at last you make it inside. Stacy takes her sweet time in pressing open the seal beneath the cap, and in your bitter impatience you all but it rip it away from her the moment she’s done. 

Vodka; always vodka. You think by now you’re ruined with it, that it runs through your veins like the drugs they’ll pump you full of tomorrow whenever it’s time. It’s always there in the back of your head like a filthy secret you’ve never been able to hide, and when at long last you feel the sting of it burn at the back of your throat you swear to god it tastes more like home than anywhere else in Southern California. 

Neither you nor Stacy say a single word to each other when you pass the bottle right back into her hand. You’re both too focused on the race to get drunk before bothering to try and socialize with each other now, and for a brief moment you try and count the times you’ve ever hung out together that didn’t end in vomit or in tears. Three years you’ve called Stacy your best and only friend, and not once do you think you’ve ever seen each other sober. 

It isn’t natural; this relationship you’ve made together. It isn’t laced with niceties and societal norms, but rather built on shared pain and the innate need to let go, and you suppose that’s the reason you both enjoy it so. Stacy gets a reprieve from the role of the aristocratic wife her husband has carved her to be, and in turn you get the chance to be around someone who doesn’t look at you like there’s something profoundly broken inside of you. You’re just two human beings, sitting in a car, trying to escape whatever it is that the both of you came to forget. 

“You’re not dressed for work.” You comment, when at last the warmth of a buzz returns to blanket around your mind. “Did you finally tell Mark that you quit?” 

Stacy scoffs and rolls her eyes, as if you were a fool to even bother to ask. 

You’d assumed that by now she’d have given up going this far to keep up the charade, all these weeks of lying to her husband after quitting in a rage. He’s always tracking her phone to see where she is, making sure she’s really here at her job instead of running around with you or other men, and it doesn’t occur to you until just now how absurd all of that actually sounds. It’s just the way things have always been; this routine of control and infantilization as natural to you now as the earth beneath your feet. 

Silence falls over the space of the vehicle, all save for the soft rumbling of the engine and Stacy hissing after another drink. You catch yourself staring at her clothes, the ones you’d commented on just a moment ago. The elastic band of her tights cuts deep into the ample flesh of her hips, and when she hooks her thumb inside to let them loose you can see the angry red line they’ve left behind. She pulls them up higher over her waist, smoothing out the wrinkles in the expensive fabric by running her hands up and down over her sides. She sees you looking, watching; you don’t care to hide it. Her body is _ perfect, _ The Birth of Venus before your eyes, and you can see it in her face she feels proud. The mark on _ her _ belly will fade away in minutes, while yours will be with you for the rest of your natural life. 

“Fuck you.” You grumble, and Stacy lets out a snort of air in amusement. 

“Oh, shut up. I’d take looking like you any day over me— Muscle separation, stretch-marks, and all.” 

She smirks against the mouth of the bottle and steals a glance through the corner of her eye. Her tanned cheeks are flushed and rosy, and you see it in the way her pupils sparkle when she forces herself to look back at the side of the building ahead, that she’s already far more gone than you. A sudden cloud of darkness passes over her delicate face, and you watch her wilt like a flower before your eyes. 

A minute passes, before she says anything. All the while you can see the thought forming in her mind, watching curiously as her brows twitch together. She cradles the rest of the bottle in her hands, stares at the floorboard as if she’s done something wrong. 

“I’m sorry,” she suddenly murmurs, and it’s like her voice is caught in her throat, “I’m sorry that I… Didn’t ever really reach out to you… After the baby…”

“It wasn’t a baby.” 

“It w— Fair enough.” Stacy frowns. “I’m just not... Good at stuff like that. At least with you. We don’t really… You know. I just didn’t really know what to say.”

A small part of you feels relieved to have the elephant in the room finally addressed head on, but that part of you is deafened by the horror of being reminded of your husband. The confines of this vehicle, sitting here with the only person who knows how to pretend to accept who you are; it was supposed to be an escape. Running here after all that you saw only made sense, a means to distract yourself from the waking nightmare of before— only now, to your dismay, you can’t stop thinking about what things were like before the rug was ripped out beneath your feet. 

Two pink lines on a stick of white plastic, and Richard was putty in your hands. He was always smiling, always pulling his lips into a grin when he held the swell of your belly beneath his fingers. You looked so much farther along than you were, and he’d joke about how it only meant she was just that excited to come out and meet her new parents. Thick glasses fogged up at the frames, tears in his eyes when it was time for the shower; and you, so at odds with all that was happening around you.

It was like something was missing inside of you that your husband could never begin to understand, and even when your nightgown had turned red beneath your sheets, all you had felt was _ cold. _

“You didn’t have to say anything.” You assure your friend, between tiny swigs from the vodka. “It was fine— It _is_ _fine…_ And then tomorrow, when I get these stupid… stretch marks off of me, and all this stupid loose skin… I’ll look even better than I ever did before.” 

Stacy’s staring at you again now. You can feel the heat of her eyes on the side of your face like flames lapping at the curve of your eye socket, but for some reason you know better than to turn your body to look at her. 

A sigh falls out from behind her swollen lips, and she leans forward suddenly to rummage through her purse for what you’re certain has to be the cigarettes she always craves whenever she starts to get drunk. Virginia Slims; they’ve always been her favorite because they make her feel reckless and elegant all at once. When she pulls out the half-empty pack you hold out your palm to ask for one as well. 

Stacy readies to drop one in your hand, but for some reason she hesitates. 

“You have surgery tomorrow,” she points out. 

“So what?” 

“So when I got my nose done they asked me a thousand times if I ever smoked— and I said ‘no’ because I hadn’t started yet… Gotta be a reason why they prod you about it so much before surgery.” 

You roll your eyes and take the cigarette anyway, enjoying the taste when you place it between your lips. Stacy graciously lights it for you with the expensive gold lighter you’re always forgetting to ask her about, and she rolls down the windows just a couple of inches more. 

“Hopefully I’ll just die while I’m under,” You mumble darkly, before catching the extent of what you’ve just said aloud. 

Stacy’s eyes widen with concern, brows furrowing as if you’ve never said anything like this to her before. As if it isn’t a habit by now, a running joke that you don’t remember ever starting. You follow her gaze to the bite-mark on your hand before suddenly pulling it back up into the sleeve of your dress to keep it hidden. 

“Everyone has to die sometime.” You explain with a shrug. “Might as well be while I’m not awake to feel it.” 

A deep puff of smoke expels from Stacy’s cheeks, and she flicks the ash from her cigarette down onto the concrete of the parking lot below. 

“I knew something was wrong.” She divulges, and turns all the way in her seat so that her body faces the side of you. “What is it? Richie use you for another one of his stupid little jokes? Flirt around with some dumb blonde again after a show?”

Your mouth opens suddenly, and then clamps back shut without answering. You’re too afraid to tell her anything about what happened this morning, not even only in part. It’s almost like there’s a power welded to that clown’s very name, and that even hinting around it will send it heading straight towards you in the flesh to devour you both. 

Warmth rushes to your cheeks; humiliation, anger, and fear all melding into one on your face, and just like that Stacy knows that whatever it is, it definitely looks like betrayal. 

“That bastard,” she hisses, and you can see in her eyes that the hatred isn’t merely for show. She feigns out a soft gag, pulling her lips back over her teeth in disgust. 

She’s never liked Richie, never been fond of his attitude or his vulgar, incessant mouth. There’s always been a wall there between them, one you could never break down even if you cared about them getting along enough to try. 

“Guess that’s just the price of marrying rich men old enough to be our fathers.” Stacy adds ruefully, and it catches you off guard. “They use you, they abuse you, and as soon as the novelty wears off they look for something even younger to warm up their beds when you’re gone.” She holds her hands together and pulls her knees up even closer to her chest. 

By now the sun is shining once more, the blazing heat of it refracting through the windshield of Stacy’s car. There are no clouds anymore, as far as you can see; only a sky so gaping wide it feel like you may fall right into it if you drink anymore. You’ll both have to go soon; back to your lives, and back to husbands who hardly even notice when you’re there. This safe, intoxicating little world you’ve both built will shatter like ice, and you’ll no longer be able to pretend that the other shoe isn’t going to drop right on your skull. 

“Why do they do it?” You ask, surprising yourself with how heartfelt you sound. “What do they gain? And what does it… even _ mean?” _

Stacy pauses for a while. She closes the cap to the bottle of booze, but never once looks away from sky. 

“Mark took me to an art museum on our third date,” she begins, and though her words are slurred her voice is clear as glass, “He just kept… _ explaining _ everything to me, like I was nine years old... I even brought up my art education degree a few times just to make a point and he just… didn’t even care. It was almost like…” You watch Stacy’s throat as she swallows. “I don’t know. It was almost like _ I _ was the _ woman _ , _ he _ was the _ man _; and I was supposed to shut my mouth and just listen… I think they like being older than us. I think the age-gap makes them feel smarter than they are. I think we make them feel important, and special; but that at the end of the day… We really don’t mean a goddamn thing to either of them.” 

She turns to look at you again, with her silken hair lying out of place and her kohl eyeliner smudged at the wing. 

_ Sad, _ you think, as you trace the chartreuse rings of her irises. _ Beautiful, but so profoundly sad. _

It’s never been a secret between the two of you, just how trapped you both truly feel. You’re always hiding, always biding the time waiting for the men in your lives to show you that they care; but you don’t know if all that she’s just said is truly fair at all. 

Sure, Mark is no saint of a man; but Stacy knew that from the start. He wanted someone young, and shiny, and smart enough to know what her place would be by his side; and he wore that mantra on his sleeve like it was gilded there. She didn’t fall into her trap the way that you did. Stacy built hers on her own. 

“Guess that’s why he fucks coeds when he thinks I’m staying at my parents.” Stacy’s sudden comment catches you wholly off guard, makes you curl up your nose in shock and disgust. 

“Jesus. You know, that’s— That’s really fucking gross..” 

“To _ you.” _ She quips, rolling her eyes and fixing her hair in the rearview mirror. “Always such a prude...” 

“Richie was my first.” You answer, because in your drunken mind it only makes sense. 

Stacy turns her head suddenly towards you as if you’d just reached out your arm to slap her across the face, and you wonder for a moment if you’ve ever told her that before now. You never talk about sex aloud with Stacy, and to be fair, you never talk about sex aloud at all. The thought of being open and candid about that part of your life makes you shudder, makes you pull your lips back over your teeth with distaste. 

You expect Stacy to try and press on, but instead she just shakes her head and stares blankly down at her lap. There’s anger on her face, dull and faint, and you wonder for a moment if it’s what you said that put it there. 

“Yeah, well, you were still a fucking teenager whenever he married you… So I guess I’m not really that surprised.” 

“I was nineteen years old.” You correct, a bit more indignantly than you’d meant. “I’d hardly call that a teenager.” 

Stacy opens her mouth, and then bites down hard on the tip of her tongue. You can see the muscle in her jaw clenching and unclenching beneath the veil of her makeup, and at last she sighs and leans back in her seat.

“Men…” She curses, and makes a faint clicking sound with her mouth. “It could be a lot worse for us though, I guess.” 

You cock your head to the side, unsure of what she’s hinting at. 

“Well for one, we could both be in the same boat as Kellan… You know Kellan— from my New Year’s Eve party? _ Her _ husband cheated on her with a _ man.” _

The roof of your mouth goes suddenly dry. You can feel your heart thudding in your chest, panic welling up like a poisonous fog in your lungs. 

“Does that—” You close your eyes for a minute, trying desperately to calm yourself down. “Does that mean that he’s gay?”

Stacy shoots you a curious look. 

“Not necessarily...” She shrugs. “But it certainly means he’s not straight.” 

A stone drops at the pit of your stomach, and even though you knew this was something you’d have to face, it doesn’t make the pill any easier for you to swallow. 

There have always been whispers, always supermarket tabloids so outrageous they’d make your eyes roll back into your head; only now they don’t seem all that outrageous to you anymore. All those lingering embraces with that freckle-faced friend from his childhood and trips back to his hometown of Maine; it’s like they’re all playing in your mind like faded pictures projected on a screen. A phone turned face down onto the tablecloth at dinner, sheets as cold as ice when you reach your arm out at night, and the way he closes his eyes when the two of you make love. All those things you thought were innocent have now been peppered with the sting of paranoia, and you can’t help but gasp when you ask yourself the most terrible question of all: Just how many men has Richard slept with since the two of you both said “I do?” 

Nothing calms you, not even the vodka. All you can do now is sit here board-stiff; screaming in your head but unable to part your lips to let it out. Surely it isn’t true. Surely he once loved you, once wanted you; even if he doesn’t anymore. It can’t be just that he’s lied to you from the start; all those memories of his hands on your body and his tongue in your mouth— he _ wanted _you. 

_ He wanted you, _ you repeat, chanting it over and over in your head. _ He wanted you, he wanted you, he wanted you. _

“I think the liquor’s really starting to catch up to me.” Stacy suddenly blurts out, and you’re painfully unaware that she senses the odd energy that’s slowly filling up the confines of the car. “I think I’m just uh… Gonna lean back and take a nap until I’m sober enough to head home.” 

“Y-yeah.” You nod, awkwardly. “I uh… I should probably head back home too… You know… Address things with Richie head on…” 

“You sure you don’t wanna wait for me to drive you back?” 

You tell her, “No,” but the offer felt empty either way. 

You aren’t wasted; and in fact you’ve walked home before far more inebriated than this, but it doesn’t stop your knees from trembling as you try to climb down from the seat of her car. Grabbing all your things and checking a thousand times to make sure you haven’t forgotten your keys again, you turn and you amble back down the streets to your home. 

Home, you consider. You wonder if that’s truly what it is to you anymore, or if you’ll walk in to see that that thing has taken your place. You wonder if it’ll look different to you now; stained with eldritch horror and a lover’s wicked betrayal, or if it’ll be just as unfamiliar to you now as it ever was before. Either way, you’re drunk enough to feel as if the only thing that matters right now is getting back to your house. 

Your mind focuses on the importance of making it to your surgery tomorrow, and having the chance to rest before preparing yourself for the anxiety and the pain that’s sure to come along with it. The danger of what you could possibly be walking yourself into doesn’t matter, nor does the fact that only just this morning you bore witness to your husband sleeping with a being that shouldn’t even exist. All you have to do is just make it home. 

Soaked and dripping with sweat, by the time you make it back to the gate you wish you could just rip your clothes right off of you before you even pass through. It salts your skin and dampens the fabric of your dress, rubbing raw the length of your body. A quick glimpse of yourself in the enormous window of your house, and you suddenly pray that no one around you recognizes just who you are. 

You stumble through the imposing front door on ankles that wobble like a newborn calf, heels catching and nearly toppling you forward on the stairs. It occurs to you vaguely that Pennywise could still very likely be here, and just as you pass through the living room you suddenly—

The sight of your husband stops you dead in your tracks. 

He’s sitting dead in the center of your perfect white sofa, his head cradled gently in his hands. His limbs are stiff and still, like a statue carved right into the cushions. He hasn’t moved for a while, you can see it in how slowly he straightens back up to look at you. Richie looks at you, only _ looks at you, _ and your heart breaks for yourself all over again. 

This man who doesn’t love you the way that you thought that he would, who has hurt you far worse than you ever imagined he was capable of doing; and you know you’d rather die than ever leave him. It takes everything you have not to just fall to the floor in defeat, to not mourn the loss of yourself with a sob. 

Richie runs his fingers through his unkempt hair, brushing back a stray curl over the breadth of his forehead. Those big, round eyes glisten in the light; just on the verge of tears without letting them spill over onto his cheeks. He looks so young to you like this, so frightened and filled with unspoken regret. His mouth opens and closes about a hundred times altogether, lips raw and red from being chewed between his teeth, and it’s the first time in your life that you’ve ever seen him speechless. 

“Is it gone?” 

He nods his head quickly in answer, small jerking movements that almost look desperate. 

“Do you love it?” You ask suddenly, without even warning yourself first. “Do you love _ Pennywise?” _

“No.” Richie answers. 

“Do you love me?” 

_ “Yes.” _Richie answers. 

“Then when?” 

Your husband’s dark brows knit together, the line in his forehead scrunching up like a wrinkled page in an old book. He doesn’t understand what you mean, and you suppose it was stupid of you to have expected him to. 

“When,” you reiterate, and your face runs hot with tears, “did I ever stop being enough?” 

He stands from his seat in an instant. You watch him through the blur of your vision and the swaying of your body on your feet, as he wraps his arms around you and pulls you in close to his chest. 

Nothing is different, and nothing has changed from this morning. You didn’t grow, or learn anything profound by running through the doors with your mascara steaming black down your cheeks. You were always going to come back here down on your knees; drunk on vodka, and on love, and too desperate to think about the stench of the sewer still lingering on his clothes.


	3. Sand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie and Pennywise share a moment on the beach at night before he has to return home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter, but a brief glimpse into Pennywise and Richie’s odd relationship that I hadn’t really fully intended to squeeze in.

The sand is cold and damp beneath Richie’s back, tiny hills and valleys pressing hard into his spine when he folds his hands behind his head. The bite-marks from this morning are still raw and aching with the reminder of being fucked. Ravished. Had. 

Beside him, Pennywise crouches down like a predator ready to spring forward in the darkness, a pale glove clawing at the fabric over its knee. Two incandescent eyes burn and glow, almost flickering when they glance him over. Richie smiles to himself; reminded fondly of chasing fireflies through the hills as a boy, snatching them up with tiny hands and teasing Eddie about how poisonous their bites could be if you squeezed them the wrong way. 

He wonders briefly if his newfound lover has ever looked at memories like that from the humans it so often preys upon, or if it confines itself only to memories of past horror and trauma. He wonders how closely it strums through his own troubled past, and if it aches to see the hatred he once held for the being in his brittle heart. He wonders, without really meaning to, just what it thinks when it looks at the memories of his marriage. 

“You are thinking of her,” Pennywise suddenly muses, “Of that girl.” 

“Fuck you. You can’t— You can’t read my thoughts.” 

The being rolls its eyes. It rasps, arrogantly, “I have known you since you were but a child. You are a fool to think I do not know what goes on in that stupid little head of yours.”

Richie sighs, pulls his lip between his teeth and tastes the ocean in his mouth. He knows by now just how futile it is to lie, how in even moments as tender as this it can still sense the slightest change in his heartbeat like a shark seeking out prey in deep water. His eyes fall to Pennywise. He feels as defeated as always, without ever once daring to put up a fight.

“Alright,” says Richie. “Alright yeah fine so I’m— You know, I’m thinkin’ about her… But she’s… You know she’s… She’s my _ wife, _ man. I _ married _ her— _ willingly, _ and then I just… Let her walk in and see all of _ that.” _

Pennywise doesn’t answer. It doesn’t even blink. There’s a long stretch of silence, save for the crashing of waves and the clown’s soft, ragged breathing as it stares numbly back.

“Y’know…” Richie begins, unable to stand not simply saying anything at all, “For someone who’s supposed to be the most apex predator in the galaxy, you sure are shit at being a fuckin’ lookout.” 

The hair on Pennywise’s head bristles like the fur of an angry cat as it summons up a playful growl. The clown pulls its limbs in close to its body, like the coils of a Jack-in-the-box ready to spring loose. Richie grins, as it pins him down hard onto the sand.

“Do not begin battles you cannot win, my love.” The monster threatens, all honeyed voice and mouth filled with deadly white fangs; and Richie responds warmly with a laugh. 

He knows it’s not funny, that there’s no room for jokes in this impossible nightmare he’s built for himself, that as it stands his wife’s trust in him lies shattered in pieces on their bedroom floor; but out here he’s able to pretend it doesn’t even matter. There is only this moment on this frigid, dark beach; only Pennywise, only himself. 

It is a comfort that no one on this earth could ever understand, the way it feels to be loved by a thing that once tried to devour him whole. The venomous clown sang to his heart full of fear, begging him to see that the thing he tried so desperately to hide needn’t be hidden at all. 

_ “I know every tear you’ve ever had to weep. I know every secret you’ve ever sworn to keep.” _

Pennywise came down from the sky on dozens of beautiful red balloons, reaching out with its hand to trace the curve of its prey’s velvet jaw. 

“_And I don’t wanna hurt you, Richie… Can’t you see? You’re not like the others. You’re just like _me.” 

The clown had taken him then, right there in the park. It had spun its powers like a silken web around them, a cocoon of the way it felt to be watched by listless eyes without ever once truly being seen. 

Their lips pressed together like a crudely-stitched wound; terror and hunger melding into one, and when he closes his eyes he can still remember the smell of it— its suit, its hair, its skin. It hadn’t smelled the way that Richie thought it would, with his breath clutched like an iron fist in his lungs. There was no lingering trace of decay or the sewer, or the cancerous black stench that Eddie had sobbed about when it had tried to devour him back at Neibolt. Instead there was only rain, sparse and warmed by the sun; and yellow flowers growing tall by an iron-wrought fence on his way home from school. Its lips smelled of leather and canvas, salt and cologne, and when it snaked its devil-tongue behind his teeth he remembers how much it had tasted like summer; like vanilla ice cream at the back of his throat, and when it tugged down his pants with inhuman claws he didn’t once dare to shy away. It was rough and dry and dirty and raw, blood slicking the way for its cock when it stretched him too far for his body to take, pinned so hard down into the grass he was sure his ribs might collapse, and yet for the first time in his adult life, Richie had finally felt free. 

Summer and freedom, the man considers, and buries his fingers deep into Pennywise’s hair. 

It’s sick and he knows it. This being, this creature, this child-eating monster who once tried to rip everyone he loves to the bone. It devoured classmates like rats tossed to a snake, murdered infants by the hundreds, and even slaughtered the brother of Richie’s oldest friend. Falling in love with the clown is the worst thing he’s ever done in his life, and yet he feels perfectly content in doing it even more every single day. 

“I love you.” Richie says, mostly because he means it, but partly because he loves how foreign it sounds when Pennywise says it back. 

The clown smiles at him, and it looks so young. A man in the swell of his twenties; wide-eyed and filled with an innocence that’s only betrayed by the rogue shade of his irises. All the years this being has walked the grounds of his earth, and yet to Richie, he hardly looks a half of his own age. 

Something pricks at his heart. He thinks of her again. 

“I love you more than she does.” Pennywise answers at last. Its brow twitches, full of deep thought. “Do you know that, Richie? I would do anything for you. I would swallow the moon for you. I would—”

“Take it easy there, Crazy Joe Davola,” Richie teases, inwardly swearing at himself for not thinking of a better clown-reference, and runs his fingers down the back of his lover’s neck, “I get it. You love me. And I love you. And someday we’ll…” 

The comedian trails off without meaning to, head falling over to the side to stare blankly out into the darkness beside them. He can see the lights of the city in the distance, brilliant and bright, like the glow that radiates from deep within Pennywise’s throat; and an idea strikes into his head. 

“You could erase her memory.” 

Pennywise’s eyes shift to the right. It’s sudden, brief, like a small child evading the gaze of their mother while being scolded. 

“No.” The clown insists. “It cannot be done. Not here, not away from my home.” 

“Then what if I got her back to Derry? You know, get her to come with me to go see my parents again or some shit? That way I don’t have to worry about her doing anything batshit crazy— to herself, or- or to me…” 

“Or I could eat her.” Pennywise grins pleasantly. “And then, you would never have to worry about her at all.” 

Richie stiffens. The being rolls its eyes. 

“She could never do anything to you.” It amends. “I would rip out her guts and eat them before her eyes. You have nothing to worry about from a creature as frail as your ‘_wife’.” _It spits the word ‘wife’ from its mouth as if it tastes rancid on its tongue, curling up the tip of its painted nose in distaste. 

Pinching the bridge of his own nose between his fingers, Richie shakes his head. He doesn’t know how to convey to it what he means, grasping at air when he searches his unbearably noisy mind. 

“Fuck you’re just— You’re not like us. You’re a monster, you know? You’re not a _ person. _You wouldn’t get it... ” He finally says, and watches as the clown suddenly recoils. “Wait, no, that’s not— Fuck. I just… C’mon, help me out here. I just mean that…” He trails off into silence, eyes desperately searching the being’s expressionless face. 

Pennywise rises up onto its feet. The sudden change of weight between his hips draws out a deep breath from Richie, and he watches helplessly when the clown begins to slowly back away. 

“Hey, man, wait.” Richie half-pleads, half-demands; and glances down at the watch his wife had bought for him for his last anniversary with his own money. “We’ve still got— Still got like two hours ‘til I have to be back. Don’t leave now.” 

It isn’t his flair for the dramatic that’s spurring on his desperation to make the being stay, but instead a harsh reality. Soon the sun will start to rise, and he’ll have to be home in time to drive his wife to the surgery center like he promised. Then, if he can keep to the schedule he’s so often breaking, he’ll have to hurry to pack up his things for another hell-filled trip to New York. Pennywise will have to return to Derry to rest, and they’ll be apart again for longer than they’ve ever been before. 

Richie props himself up on an elbow and squints one of his eyes as he lets loose one of his best sheepish little grins. He reaches his arm out, another display of remorse. 

The clown stares at it for a minute, the pale hand outstretched before it; and then it frowns, and vanishes wordlessly out into the night. 

“Fuck.” Richie curses, and buries his face in his sand-covered hands. “Fuck.” 

He knows he isn’t in danger, and knows it would never lay a hand on his wife so long as he tells it not to; but this isn’t how he wanted to say goodbye. Richie closes his eyes, waves in his ears, and counts the minutes until he has to leave to go home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I know we haven’t really gotten into the sUpEr CrAzY stuff yet but I’m still having fun writing this and thinking of ideas. Anyways goodnight I hope your crush texts you and find money in your jacket pocket


	4. Pre-Op

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie takes you in for your abdominoplasty surgery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter bc you know a bitch likes to split things up :(((: I don’t expect this fic to be like wildly long though so hopefully it doesn’t feel like I’m dragging things out TOO much in the end... idk anyways happy reading :)

There’s a weight on your body, warm and heavy between your thighs, and when at first you wake up you can’t remember where you are. The roof of your mouth is sandpaper against your tongue and your skull aches as though you’ve been bashed in the head. The room around you is but an unfamiliar blur in the midst of your hangover, blinding you with stark white light when you force open your eyes. 

You don’t remember falling asleep, but when you recognize Richie’s face smiling softly above you you’re too embarrassed to say so out loud. All that comes out instead is a quiet, “Please don’t go,” so strained it hardly sounds human. It feels like a reflex, like something you’d say even if you didn’t mean it. 

Wordless, your husband stares at you for a moment, brushes back a strand of wild hair from your forehead. He leans down for a kiss; chaste and brief, the first you’ve shared in what has to be weeks and you know that you shouldn’t, but you welcome hungrily before demanding yourself to pull away. 

“I’m sorry,” Richie apologizes, spit on his lips, using his best impression of a childlike voice. He pulls his mouth into a dramatic frown, but you can see a genuine sadness seeping through his eyes. He looks every bit as remorseful as he did yesterday in your living room. 

“I know.” You answer, because you believe him. You have to. 

His breath smells like toothpaste. The slight bags beneath his eyes are swollen and dark, the lines in his face seeming somehow deeper than before. There’s sand on his jacket, when you run your fingers down his spine, and even though you can tell he’s been awake for a while, you don’t dare ask him why it’s there. 

“It’s just a week and a half.” Richie assures you, at least a hundred times before you’ve even pulled on your clothes. If you weren’t so nervous about the surgery, and so fixated on when you’ll be able to have your next drink, you’d probably notice there’s something off about the way those words come pouring out of his mouth. It isn’t until a bit later, when he repeats himself again over the rushing of the faucet when you’re washing your face, that you realize it sounds more like he’s saying it to himself than to you. 

_ He doesn’t love you, _ a demon inside of you whispers. _ Not really. Not in the way that counts. _

You close your eyes to try and shut out the sound of it. Instead you focus only on what’s to come, and how beautiful you’re going to be again in just a few months. You think of running your hands down over your body and feeling the absence of flesh, of marred and broken skin; but no matter what you do, it takes everything you have not to scream. It’s almost like Richie is here, right now in this room, and yet, he couldn’t be further away. 

Even a sightless man could see that your husband wants out of here— out of your house, and out of the city, and out of California itself as fast as he can possibly go. As soon as it’s time he’s practically shoving you into the car and pulling you out, a steel-grip on your arm so tight you’re worried what people might think when they see you walk through the doors of the surgery center. 

Everyone always recognizes Richie. Always. Their faces light up when they glance away from their phones, all but vibrating in their chairs with the urge to come and speak to him in person. You can even see it in the staff, the way they smile especially wide each time they call for, “Mrs. Tozier,” to follow them back.

A pretty nurse around your age leads you to a section of the hospital squared off by pale blue curtains and hands you a gown to change into, and even she can’t seem to control her own urge to stare. 

“You’re sure about this?” Richie’s jarringly loud voice surprises you when you’re finishing up getting redressed, his handsome face peering inside before he steps in behind you altogether. He looks you up and down, from the thick pink socks you’d been given to the hair in a mess of a bun on top of your head; as if he’s only now just weighing you up to see if you really do need anything done. “Because I mean…” The comedian trails off and winces as he gestures to the area around his own belly, “Are you _ sure..?” _

You answer him with only a glare. 

This is all you’ve been talking about for weeks on end, and even though your heart is racing in your throat, there’s not a thing in this world that could ever change your mind. The scar, the pain, the pills, the risk; none of that matters to you now. Before your ill-fated pregnancy you were always the most beautiful woman in the room, and all that’s keeping you going is the hope that you’ll someday be that woman again. 

The same nurse from before comes back to hook you up to an IV, and you can see stars in her eyes every time she glances to Richie sitting bored in the wooden chair beside your bed. Her gaze bounces between the two of you, and lands on the indention your wedding ring left behind when you’d taken it off to change. The freckles on her nose, peeling from a faded sunburn, twitch as she crinkles it just so. 

“Did you have a c-section?” She asks gently, and Richie looks up suddenly from his lap. “I had one with my daughter.” She reiterates. “I’d love to have this done myself. There’s always this little pocket of fat right above your incision,” the nurse screws up the corner of her mouth, cocks her head to the side, “and it just… Never really goes away. You can exercise, eat right, but…” she trails off again and looks back to you, smiling. 

“I was pregnant.” You answer coldly. 

Her brows furrow. “Oh, but you… Have children…?” 

“No.” 

The nurse’s smile disappears. She doesn’t say anything to you again after that. 

Richie shifts in his seat, glues his eyes back to his phone. He looks embarrassed now. He always looks embarrassed when you speak to people in front of him, though it doesn’t phase you anymore the way that it used to. She shouldn’t have asked something like that, and it’s not your responsibility to make her feel comfortable for it. All your life people have made comments about the way you interact with others, the way you hold yourself and the way you speak, how odd and how strange and how cold; and yet Richie was supposed to be the first person who didn’t see those things inside of you that you didn’t see yourself. Your knight in shining armor, a pseudo father-figure with more money than you could ever spend in your life; and yet now you’re pretty sure he sees you as more of an alien than that creature he fucks when you’re gone. 

Wait. What? 

Your mother arrives just in the nick of time, her cheap handbag strung clumsily across her chest and her bleached hair clinging wet to her forehead. She looks thinner than the last time you saw her, skin darkened so deep under the California sun that she hardly even looks like herself. She offers you a smile, as warm as any daughter could ever hope for, but crosses her arms tight instead of reaching out to touch you. The two of you have never exactly been ones for hugging, but still. It sends a rush of ice water through your body, colder even than the saline coursing through your veins. 

The anesthesiologist comes to talk to you soon after, and you can feel in your gut that it’s finally about to happen. Your heart thuds in your chest; from both excitement and the unavoidable fear of being put to sleep, but you try not to let on to anyone just how freaked out you’re starting to feel. 

Everything is going to be fine, you chant in your head, balling up the thermal sheet by your thigh. And if it isn’t, well; then at least I’ll be asleep when it happens. 

Your mother glances at Richie one last time before they finally take you back for surgery, thin-lipped and arms crossed even tighter now with thinly-veiled scorn. She doesn’t let on, not even in the slightest, but something tells you she can see the betrayal on Richie’s face like a scarlet letter pinned to his chest. Mothers always have a way of sniffing things like that out. 

_ Like bloodhounds, _you think, and frown. 

There’s something new in your IV now. It softens the edges of the room, makes Richie look even more perfect when he leans forward to kiss you goodbye. His lips make a soft ‘smooching’ sound against your forehead, and you can’t help but stifle a laugh. 

Your mother waves you off, the fluttering of her fingers like the wings of a pretty little bird, and you try not to laugh again as a nurse starts to wheel you back. 

The last thing you think before they place a mask over your face, is how much you hope to God that Richie comes back from New York.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter comin soon!! :) thanks for reading here have a waffle (>^-^)>#


	5. Post-Op

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a crazy exciting chapter but really just wanted to tackle it and get it out of the way. If medical stuff/pain/cosmetic surgery bothers you then oof is this chapter probably not for you

“Tell me something, Mrs. Tozier… Just how terrible do you have to be for your husband to leave you for a demon?”

There’s a ringing in your ears, and a pain radiating across the entire expanse of your belly. A terrible light pierces through the crack of your squeezed-shut eyes like a shard of milk-colored glass, blinding you entirely against the desire to seek out the source of the voice taunting you from beyond. 

“Fuck you,” is all you can moan back, twisting your mouth up until your dry lips crack. You don’t know what’s happening, don’t even know where in hell you are or why you’re here— but you still know clearly how to tell whenever you’ve been insulted. “Cunt,” comes tumbling out afterwards, and it tastes like blood from how much effort you have to put forth into saying it. 

The voice from the ivory void fails to retort back, and you laugh drunkenly at your own small victory. Your head lolls back like the undeveloped movement of a tiny infant’s head, slamming hard against something painfully firm. That sudden connection to the darkest parts of your memory, combined with the beeping of machines in your ears, and at once you’re able to put together that you’re still inside of the hospital. You’re heavily drugged, propped up into a chair, and in more pain than you’ve ever been in your insignificant life; but you certainly haven’t traveled far. 

“He slept with an  _ alien.”  _ A female voice, different from the first, hisses loudly just by your head. Her words are high and yet grating somehow, like the rubbing of two stones together right in the shell of your outer ear. 

“It was a serial-killing clown,” another voice whispers. 

“A thing that eats babies alive,” adds yet another. 

Indignation draws the features of your face inward towards the single point of your nose. You scowl angrily at people you cannot yet seem to recognize or even see. 

It occurs to you, vaguely, that they may not know you can hear them; the malicious chattering of hospital staff who think their patient is still unconscious. The things that they’re saying; terrible and horrible and without any semblance of reason— you’re certain you’re not meant to be hearing a single word of it. 

“Man, oh man, is she pathetic. Doesn’t she know that Richie never loved her?”

“Not even a little bit.” 

“Not even  _ once.”  _

“Let’s be honest here, ladies… That man, Richie Tozier? Only woman a man like  _ that _ loves is his  _ mother.”  _

Another groan spills from your lips, the blurred walls of the hospital spinning rapidly when at last your vision comes spiraling into focus. Nausea sours the lining of your stomach, has you bending to grip at the unfamiliar sensation wrapped impossibly tight around the whole of your belly. Curious fingers catch clumsily against tubes and plastic and gauze, and all at once you start to genuinely panic. 

“Oh, God… Oh, Jesus Christ. Am I… Am I even supposed to be  _ awake?”  _ The hand at your waist flies up to your chest, flat over your gown-covered breast as your trachea begins to violently spasm.  _ “I can’t breathe,” _ you gasp out,  _ “I can’t— _ ”

Tennis shoes squeak against tile. Fabric rustles, and voices raise a little louder before a soft mask presses up to your face. Your lungs ache, every nerve-ending in your body screaming for air before at long last the relief of oxygen floods its way through your nostrils and mouth. Tears fill your eyes, the aftershocks of your own terror leaving your body lying pliant and weak.

“Is that better?” 

The sight before you comes into focus. An unfamiliar nurse is standing just to the left of you, pale hand held firmly against the mask over your mouth. It takes everything just to nod your head and reach up to take hold of the mask on your own, but you force yourself to do it anyway. 

The heaving of your chest gradually slows. Your gaze drops down to your own body; slowly, expecting to see the worst and feeling suddenly relieved. Your belly isn’t hanging bloodily open on a sterile metal table, and it becomes clear to you that you aren’t still being operated on at all— but that the surgery has just happened. It  _ happened,  _ and the pain left in its wake is unlike anything you could have ever imagined before coming here. 

You watched videos. You heard stories. You knew on some level what to expect; all the whiny new mothers crying over the fact that their husbands had to carry them back and forth from the sofa to the bathroom— but it’s only now that you understand that not an ounce of any of it was an exaggeration. 

Every breath you take in is a battle against the binder around you, and also against the internal stitching that runs in a vertical line up the very center of your stomach. It almost feels like cheese wires cutting into your abdominal muscles; too-strong sutures that threaten to slice their way through your flesh if you should cough or laugh just a little too harshly. Half of your belly is gone, the rest pulled and stretched drum-tight down to your pelvis; and oh how you can feel it. You can feel every  _ inch _ of it; every stitch, every cut, even the tugging and pulling of the drains when you run your fingers curiously over the blood-filles bulbs. There’s a brace around your midsection, and though you were vaguely aware of it as soon as you woke up, you’re  _ achingly _ aware of it now. It digs deep into your quickly-swelling skin, thickly-padded, with unforgiving fabric that rubs raw every inch of your body. Hot, violent pain lights up your sides like the stinging of hornets; like dozens of paper cuts across the curve of your waist. You tell yourself it’s only from the liposuction, that you knew this pain would come and that soon it will someday be worth it, and yet, in this moment all you want to do is scream. It’s like you’re being constricted from the inside out, gutted and gored with thousands of razor-sharp claws, and in a moment of sheer-panic, you’re certain this cannot be normal. 

“Who else?” You grate out miserably, locking your jaw and grating your teeth. “Who— Wh-Who else was in here? With you— us— earlier?” 

The nurse in the room looks suddenly confused. Her thin, ginger brows furrow tightly together; like two fresh incisions on her porcelain skin. 

“No one, ma’am. It’s only been me.” 

Something you cannot find the words to describe suddenly prickles your skin. The closest thing you can possibly think of is the stomach-drop feeling of being watched from the shadows, some instinctual warning passed down from the days when long-toothed creatures preyed easily upon us; and your eyes narrow into a distrusting glare. 

_ A shapeshifter,  _ Richie had warned you, and for some reason it hadn’t been all that important until now. The thing that must hate you, that must be willing to do anything it can in order to take your place; and of all things for it to be, it has to be a fucking shapeshifter. 

“Give me a break.” You hiss, gripping the arms of your chair until your knuckles turn as white as the bones beneath your skin. 

The nurse, who’d just been peeking out into the hallway as if to look for someone, suddenly freezes and turns back towards you. She quirks a brow, and frowns with the corners of her dark full lips. 

“Don’t play games with me… I know who you are. I know what you are…” You amend, blowing hot air out through your flared-open nostrils. 

The imposter nurse feigns out her ignorance, staring puzzledly back at you with nothing to say. Your arm raises up to your naval, the highest you can lift it in this state, and you point a trembling finger in her direction to let her know you aren’t an idiot. You know that she’s the clown, and you know she’s here to hurt you. 

Sweat beads at the front of your hairline. You’re only now realizing just how trapped you truly are in this situation, and it terrifies you in a way that makes you feel both claustrophobic and weak. You can’t walk from it, can’t run; and just as you open your mouth to try and sound out a scream, someone new comes barreling into the room. 

The nurse lets out a loud sigh of relief, and you suddenly understand who the nurse had been looking for when she’d been peeking into the hallway. It had been your  _ mother.  _

Her face gives you comfort, and you’re convinced at once that the clown is far away from here— hopefully back in Derry where it belongs. Smiling gently, she rushes in close to your side to check you over, touching the bare skin of your arm as if it might shatter beneath her dark fingers. 

“Oh, Honey,” the older woman croons softly, like someone speaking to a gravely injured animal. “How do you feel? Are you alright? Your shape looks better already; I can tell.” 

“Where’s Richie?” You ask unceremoniously, because for some reason it’s suddenly all that matters. You’re still woozy, vision still doubled from whatever they’d pumped through your veins; and all you want now is Richie. 

“Well, Sweetie, he’s—”

“Where’s my husband?”

Your mother’s eyes shift to the nurse, laughing awkwardly as she kneels down closer by your side. She takes your hand into her own and the movement makes you hiss. 

“Richie’s already left for New York.” Her thin lips pull into a delicate smile, her tilted eyes looking as open and sincere as she’s ever looked before. “You’ll see him when he gets back.” 

“Oh.” You knew that. You knew he wouldn’t still be here by the time you woke up, and yet for some reason it seems so terrible a fact now that you can’t blame yourself for forgetting it. He should be here. He should be taking care of you, helping you heal and holding your hand all the way. “I feel like I’m gonna fucking die,” you croak, and your mother lets out a reassuring laugh. 

“You’re gonna be fine.” 

You shake your head at that. No matter how you breathe, how you squirm and shift in your seat; you cannot escape the intensity of the pain ripping its way across your core. All that’s left now is to go home and wait until it’s time to take your first dose of pain medication, and you pray to God whatever they give you is strong enough to knock you back out for a while. 

The nurse lays out a mountain of information; how to care for your drains and when to take your pills and how to sleep in a recliner instead of flat in a bed; all the while addressing your mother instead of yourself. Head cocked over onto your shoulder, eyes staring out into the pristine white void, it's honestly a wonder you don’t start drooling before they finally wheel you back out to the car. 

Four days— that’s about the extent of what you’re able to gather in this state. Four days until you come back to the surgery center to get your drains out, along with the excess sponges cutting their way into your sides and the tube shoved into your new excuse for a belly-button. Until that time your mother will be staying back at the house with you while Richie is away, and then Richie will be back home to take care of you. 

“Four days…” You groan like a zombie, as you drift off on your pretty white couch, “Four days… And everything will be fine…” 

Your mother smiles at you, wider than you’ve ever seen before. 

“Just fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with this :)


	6. Day One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You wake up at home, ready to heal. Richie arrives in New York City.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reader sounds super whiny in this chapter, but I can attest to the fact that they’re in a lot of pain lmao. I had to have a hernia repair with abdominoplasty and am allergic to painkillers so healing from it was an agony that I don’t wish on anyone lmao. But anyways, lots of talk of painkillers in this chapter which can be very triggering as well as a lot of pain/agony

In the end it’s the pain that wakes you back up again; unfathomable now that the drugs have fully left your system. It feels like every nerve-ending in your body has been cut and bled dry, an agony so raw and untouched it’s almost like art— almost beautiful in the way that you’ve never felt anything like it before. Your spine is stiff, neck frozen on the arm of the sofa, and you call out weakly for your mother in the darkness of your living room. 

“Mom?”

Your voice comes out quiet, strained; but it’s the best you can manage in your current state. Your throat feels raw and sore, the muscles in your belly unable to push out the sound as loud as you’d like and the thought makes your heart race in your chest. It feels like one of those terrible nightmares where no matter how hard you try, you’re always unable to scream. 

Minutes pass with no answer. Your house is a castle, with six guest bedrooms and more square-footage than any two people could ever need in their lives. Your mother could be anywhere, sound asleep, and unable to hear the barely-there croak of your voice. Another strained-out cry of, “Mom!” and you cover your eyes with your fingers. 

It takes a lot not to panic. Between the horror of sobriety, the agony of surgery, a too-full bladder and a throat so dry it’s starting to throb; the only option left seems to be to wait it out until at last she wakes up. There’s no feasible way for you to get up onto your feet to search for your phone or a bottle of oxy to try and ease you through the morning. You can wedge your arms behind yourself just enough to lean your body to the edge of the sofa cushion, but that’s the extent of it. Once you’re up there’ll be no straightening of your spine, and no support to keep you on your feet. One wrong move— one bad fall— and your stitches will slice through your flesh like piano wire. 

The mental image makes you hiss and grimace, gnashing your teeth and turning your head away to keep from looking down at your pathetic state. The bulbs of your drains are full of blood and air, and you can remember enough from the nurse’s speech yesterday to know that they need to be emptied every few hours. You aren’t quite sure how long you’ve been asleep, or what the consequences are of not doing draining them; but you’re certain it can't be good. 

“Mom!” You call out again, and in your desperation you find your voice to be a bit louder this time. “Mom, please, I need your help...” 

This time, after a few minutes of waiting with your breath held in your chest, you can finally hear the faint flicking of a light turning on in the distance. Relief rinses over you. At long last you can hear the soft pattering of your mother’s feet as she makes her way down the stairs— louder and louder across the soft white carpet of your living room as she heads towards you. 

“Everything okay?” She asks nonchalantly, coming to stand in front of you on the carpet. A broad, bony hip jutted out to the side, your mother taps her foot against the ground as if she were bored. 

A look of shock falls over your face, though your first instinct is to be annoyed. It’s nearly morning again; which means she hasn’t done a single thing to help you since walking you over onto the sofa to sleep. Nearly a full twenty-four hours, and she hasn’t moved a single inch to see if you’re alright. 

Years of gaslighting and abuse and neglect, only to now reap the rewards of everything your wealthy husband sows without so much as a, “thank you,” and you can see it in her eyes that taking care of you now is nothing more than a burden even though she had offered to do it. 

“Pills.” You croak, shaking away your own terrible thoughts. “I need my— My pills...” 

Hair disheveled, makeup smeared across her face; it’s only when she turns to head towards the kitchen that you realize she’s wearing Richard’s clothes. It’s nothing but an old college tee and a pair of faded flannels, but the realization strikes you as odd when she grabs a bottle from on top of the counter. 

A fat green capsule plops down into her palm like a bird laying a shiny new egg, and she offers it out to you with a glass of lukewarm water. You’ve learned enough about pills in your days of excessive wealth and depression to know the difference between a Perc 30 and an antibiotic, so as soon as it’s down your throat you hold your hand out empty again. 

Your mother’s face twists up in confusion. You take a deep breath to try and stay calm, and politely remind her that you need to take your painkiller now as well. 

_ Now, _ you think inwardly, gritting through your teeth, _ before all this pain rips my body in half. _

“But I already gave you one,” she says. 

“What?” 

“Just before you fell asleep.” Your mother’s brows furrow. The line in her forehead reminds you of Richie’s, as it deepens when she shakes her head slowly from side to side. “Don’t you remember, Hon?”

“No.” You scoff, and it sends a bolt of pain through your core. “I don’t.” 

It takes more self-control than you knew you even had to keep from breaking down, from suddenly shoving a throw pillow over your face and screaming until your lungs bleed. You can feel a sheen of sweat forming over your face, dampening the ends of your hair. 

“Well then when is—” You pause to calm yourself, gripping the bridge of your nose between your fingers. “Wh-when can I take them again? Or when would at least be safe for me to take them again?”

“I’d have to look…”

“Please.” You beg. “It feels like a Great White took a bite out of my fucking stomach…”

Your mother walks off again, out of site, and you dig your hands through the cushions once more to try and find your cell-phone. 

“And hey, where’s my phone at? And have you uh, have you heard from Richard?” 

Sitting listlessly now at one of your stools at the bar, your mother simply gives you a shrug and says, “You haven’t had your phone since you came home.” Then, dully, “I can call the surgery center— see if you left it there.” 

You drop your head back onto the sofa, and let out the biggest sigh you can manage in this state. Another glance out of the corner of your eye, and you find that your mother has completely left altogether. 

“What the fuck?” You can’t help but breathe out a laugh, at odds with the surreal behavior of the only person here who’s supposed to be helping you. 

It’s no secret that your mother is cruel, that her love for you doesn’t extend beyond what you can offer her; but even in the past when you’ve been hurt or sick she’s never acted like this before. She was a nurse, once, before she met your father, and even after you lost your pregnancy she was right by your side, offering you more comfort than you knew she was even capable of.

_ So why is she only being like this now? _ You wonder, earnestly, and the answer suddenly hits you like a sledgehammer to the back of the head. 

  
  


* * *

When Richie finally lands in New York City, it’s as if he’s only now able to catch his breath for the first time in years. He realizes how that sounds, considering the fact that this place isn’t exactly lauded for its daisy-fresh air; but even still it’s unlike anything else when the wind starts flooding through his lungs. On the way over to check into the hotel where he’ll be staying, he even catches himself thinking of how much this place feels like home. 

Something like guilt nestles in the space below his ribs, and he thinks of how silly it feels to consider this place more his home than he does Derry, Maine. After all, Derry is where he made all his lifelong friends, all his adventures and memories, and most importantly where he grew into the man he is now. It’s where he met the being he loves, and who loves him back more fiercely than he ever could have asked for. His eyes bounce from the windows of skyscrapers to the people walking by in the rain, and the feeling only grows stronger. 

There’s just something about this place that always calls to his heart. 

  
  


* * *

Hours pass, and soon the blinding white of your living room turns yellow with the setting of the sun. The imposter resolves to help you to the bathroom and lets you empty your drains in a small plastic cup, but they refuse to ever once give you any of the painkillers you so desperately need. 

Normally when something hurts this intensely there’s always the comfort of knowing it’ll only last a few more minutes— but now you don’t have that. This pain will draw on for hours and days to come, and without your medication there’ll be nothing you can do to stave it off. There’s no soothing it, no speeding if up, and there is certainly no escape. 

You know that the thing pretending to be your mother is certainly only just Pennywise, but the pain becomes so intense you can’t help but cry out for it. 

“Please,” you beg, and it feels like you might honestly vomit, “I can’t do this anymore… I need painkillers…” 

“Don’t you remember, Hon? I gave you your medicine— right before you fell asleep.”

You stare at the familiar shape of your mother until your vision blurs with tears. 

It takes everything to prop yourself up into a sitting position, and the shifting around of your wounded belly feels nothing short of wrong. Thoughts of having gauze and medical equipment left sewn up inside of you wreck your pain-ridden mind, fears you didn’t even know existed until now making your stomach curdle and sour. You want this to be over. You would have never gotten this surgery if you knew you wouldn’t be able to take anything to stave off the pain, and it feels as if you’re in your own personal hell. 

“Please,” you beg, and because you don’t want it to know you’ve caught on so early, you utter a weak, “Please, _ Mom...” _

“Honey— It’s just not time yet.” 

“What the fff-uck are you talking about?!” You snarl, dripping with sweat, “I know— I kn-know I haven’t taken a single fucking pill—”

“Have you ever considered that you might have a substance abuse problem?” 

“Just let me see the fucking bottle!” 

The imposter stares at you from behind cold and unyielding eyes, frozen like a statue in the fading light of your home. They tap their foot, impatient and annoyed, and turn back around to leave. 

“I’ll come back when you’ve calmed down.” 

“What?!” You call after them, “Don’t you dare just fucking leave me down here! Don’t you— _Fuck!”_

It feels like there’s something inside of you and it’s slowly ripping its way out. Your hand goes to your belly, to the excruciatingly tight brace wrapped around it, and you know without doubt that this is torture. Pennywise is hurting you, fucking with you; making you suffer all while your husband isn’t here to tell it to stop. 

Your knees shake violently when you prop them up towards yourself, your mind overwhelmed from the pain and the need for something to end it, and you close your eyes as you silently begin to cry. 

_Three more days,_ you think to yourself. _Three more days until all of this comes to an end. _

  
  


* * *

All alone in the privacy of his frigid hotel room, Richie finally allows himself to freak the hell out. 

It’s the first time he’s truly been alone since his wife had walked in on him sleeping with Pennywise, and he feels himself shattering under the weight of it like glass beneath the sole of a boot. He may have grown tired of her, numb to her touch and her face and the sound of her voice; but he certainly never meant for her to ever see _ that. _

Richie drops down on the side of the bed and buries his hands in his hair, cringing at the memory of her slamming back against the hallway in horror. Falling in love with the terror who had plagued him and his friends as children has been hard enough to deal with on its own, and now this? The sight of his betrayal all laid out ugly before him, and the guilt of knowing he’ll never be able to want her the way that he tells her he does? It makes his heart run cold in his chest. 

“I know I’ve always been an asshole,” Richie mutters to himself, staring at the intricate patterns on the floor, “But this is… Jesus fucking Christ, even for me this is uh… This is a lot.” 

He drags his hands down to his face, waiting for the panic to set in and finding sadness there in its place. 

He feels sad for his fight with Pennywise before he left, and when he thinks about that he only feels worse. He should be sad for his wife and the pain that he’s caused, all the doubt and insecurity only to reassure her with words he doesn’t really mean. 

_Three more days,_ Richie thinks, somberly. _Three more days until I can come back home, and maybe by then I’ll have thought of a way to fix all of this. _


	7. Day Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You continue to recover, as Richie continues to reflect.

Today you wake up feeling even more pathetic than the day before, all the strength you had left in your being sucked clean from your bones until all that’s left is a bandaged-up mess lying uncomfortably on a corner of your Italian leather sofa. The binder around your belly is so brutally tight now against the violet swelling of your abdomen that you swear it must be cutting into your skin like paper slicing between the vulnerable split of two fingers, and when you gather the courage to peel up your shirt you find that you’re right. The tapered edge of the canvas-like material is soaked with tiny petals of dried blood. Your fingers dance dangerously over the velcro straps at the side of your waist, aching to rip it open in order to escape the indescribable discomfort raging through your waist. Be that as it may, you’re certain that without any help in doing so your incision would rip violently apart and your entire body would collapse in on itself like the dying of a star in the night. All of this pain and these past few days healing will have all been for nothing, and you’ll have to start over just as nauseous and mangled as the moment you woke up in the surgery center. 

Your bladder is full and heavy, just like the bulbs hanging from the outside of your brace by two little safety pins dangling from the thick exterior of your binder. You think of calling out for Pennywise to help you hobble your way to the bathroom, but decide it wouldn’t help you even if you overcame your pride to ask. From what you know of the things it can do, it can surely smell the agony splitting your stomach into a cross just as easily as it can smell the raging of a child’s fear when it shows them its teeth. It knows that you need both your pills and its aid in order to make this torture come to an end, and it yet refuses to even think of trying to give into you. Instead it merely ignores you, and gaslights you with so much ease that for a short while you can’t help but wonder if this is truly your mother after all. 

Suddenly it comes to mind that if this thing before you truly is the creature instead of your own mother, then perhaps you should feel some sense of alarm. You should feel worried about what it’s done with her, where she is, and if she’s alive; but the sick truth of it is that you don’t really care. 

Your mother abused you. She abused you all your life, in ways you’d rather not have to think about now; all those torturous years of being made to tremble and cry and vomit and hate, until at long last you’d grown just as cold and as callous as she could ever have hoped to be. There was a sickness in her like a storm always threatening to rage, and even though you tell yourself that she made you this way through all the things that she did to you, a part of you wonders if you were always born with that same storm raging inside of you as well. 

You’d gathered the courage once, to ask her if she had been this way always; on a day where she had seemed especially harmless, and she had told you that she hadn’t. She told you that your father was her soulmate. She told you that she was never the same after his death, that the sight of the police standing grimly at her front door had severed a wire in the back of her head, that it had taken her heart right from her chest. 

* * *

Richie finishes his taping with hours left to spare, and once he’s free from the blinding white of the studio lights he decides to head back to his hotel room to sleep. He peels off his too-nice shoes and flomps himself back onto the cold white duvet, ignoring all the memories of warnings he’s heard over the years that the outside covers never get washed, and he loosens the tension in his spine like a string pulled taut between two fingers finally being severed. 

His room is cold and empty, but it’s a comfortable sort of emptiness, the kind that one seeks out whenever everything else in the world feels too jumbled, too staticky. The loud whirring of the air-conditioner and the huffing of his own breath the only sounds to be heard even if he closes his eyes and strains. 

In front of him lies his phone, silent and untouched on the corner of an expensive-looking table just a few feet away. He wills it to vanish. He wills it to become sentient and crawl its way out beneath the door and to a room with an opened window before flinging itself down to the earth to shatter into a fine dust of glass and metal. It occurs to Richie that he could probably do that himself, but setting up a new phone has always been such a dull pain in the ass. It’s not that he’s a coward who’s too afraid to turn it on because he wants to ignore his wife’s calls, it’s just that— well— yeah. He’s a coward who’s too afraid to turn it on because he wants to ignore his wife’s calls. Fine. 

But it’s not that he doesn’t care if she’s doing alright, that much he knows is true. As dysfunctional as their relationship has always been and as much as one of Richie’s feet has always been wedged through the door to keep it from closing, he knows he’d never get over it if something ever happened to her. He may not love her in the way that husbands are supposed to love their pretty wives, but he still cares for her nonetheless. 

Richie sighs, the corner of his lip twisting into an almost-smile. He can see her now in the black of his eyelids, the memory of when they’d first met ringing so clearly in his head that he feels as if he can reach out to touch her with his hand. She’d looked so much older than she really was, all those delicate lines etched into her golden face from years of scowling and frowning at all the things she despised, and yet, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life. She was beautiful in a way that didn’t seem fair; her long hair so white it almost looked silver and her eyes as pale as Pennywise’s whenever it wants them to be. Her lips were soft and full and her jaw was so perfect it looked as if it’d been carved that way by the hand of an artist, and Richie’s eyes had followed her hand whenever she’d raised it up to her neck. Fingers long and delicate and soft, he’d half-expected her to curl them into fists and punch him for how long he’d been staring. Instead she’d only just dropped them down to her side and pulled her sleeve over crescent-shaped bruises littered over the curve of her wrist, and it would be months until Richie learned just what those bruises were from. 

He wonders, cynically, if a part of him had always known he was going to end up breaking her heart.

He loved her at some point, he thinks. When he’d taken her away from the life she’d always known and promised her a future of luxury and fame, he’d been certain he’d love her like that always. Before the affairs, before the long trips away just to get away from the sound of her voice, he’d been certain that they had been made for each other. 

Richie’s eyes suddenly peer open, as he finds himself wondering about something he’s been begging himself not to think about— and that is, if she had ever cheated on him as well. He supposes he’d always assumed that she had, that she would, that one day she’d grow bored of him and fuck another man just as young as as beautiful as she is herself, but now he isn’t so sure. The thought racks him with more guilt than he’d had only a moment before; for there’d been others than only just Pennywise. Older women in hotel bars, agents and fans and people who pretended not to know who he was; but they’d never amounted to anything more than one night stands and a few hours of regret as he hurled into the bowl of his toilet the next morning. He’d told himself that she was probably at home doing exactly the same, but it hadn’t been until he’d seen the look on her face that day in the hallway outside of their bedroom, that he’d questioned if maybe he was wrong. 

That maybe she had loved him more than he had thought. 

  
  
  


* * *

At long last the pain gets the best of you, and you call out for her with all the strength in your lungs. To your surprise she comes down the staircase almost at once, wearing a pair of her own clothes now instead of Richie’s. You find yourself staring at her intently, looking for any inconsistency you can find; the way that she walks, the sway of her hair, the faded acne scars that pepper the deep hollows beneath her cheekbones, and in the end you find nothing. If this really is a ruse, then it’s the most believable ruse you’ve ever seen. 

Your knees and arms are like rubber when your mother— or perhaps the shapeshifter— helps you up to hobble towards the bathroom behind the sofa, sore beyond words when it turns its back to leave you to make the last few steps on your own. You struggle to pull off the caps of your drains to empty them down into the sink, and it takes every ounce of pride you have not to ask it to help lower you down into a crouch onto the toilet seat. 

It feels like weeks since you’ve had your last drink. Your limbs rattle and vibrate even when you beg for them to let you rest still, and for a terrible moment the word ‘withdrawal’ flashes at the back of your mind before you will it away. Sure, you indulge— all your empty bottles of wine stashed hidden under the guest-bathroom sink and the undying need to be spared from the horrors of sobriety— but it doesn’t mean you’re like _ that. _

You wash your hands quickly and open the door to see its face staring dully back at you, wearing your mother like a mask stretched over its own monstrous skin. It’s so perfect you almost believe it, until in one last-ditch effort to stave off the pain you ask her if you can have one of your pain-killers, and she assures you that she’s just given you one. 

Hate rises within you like a tide. 

“You’re not my mother,” you hiss, before you can think to stop yourself. 

The imposter’s grip on the bend of your arm suddenly loosens. She stares at you as if you’ve grown a second head, bright eyes round and frozen in place. 

“What?” 

Your heart begins to race in your chest. You shouldn’t have said anything, and now there’s no going back from it. The dread of revealing that you know that it’s here with you settles like a stone in your gut, knowing deep down that confronting it will surely end in a fight that you’re certainly going to lose. 

It isn’t going to exercise its powers on you simply because you’re married to the man that it loves, and in fact, you think that that’s probably all the more reason for it to want to get rid of you.

Even so, you straighten your spine as much as you can without tearing yourself apart, and you repeat with the clearest voice you can, “You’re _ not _ my fucking _ mother.” _

She lets out a scoff. “You’re delirious,” she grumbles, as she begins urging you back over towards the safety of the sofa. “Of course I’m your mother; I gave birth to you myself.” 

You settle down hard between the cushions. 

“No,” you shake your head. “You know what I’m talking about. This isn’t… You. Not really.” 

Your mother’s face falls into a look of grave concern. She takes a step back from you and looks you up and down. 

“Do you need me to take you back to the hospi—“

“When was I born? Huh? What’s my— wh-wh-what’s my favorite color?” Your eyes narrow into slits. “Who’s my favorite actor? What’s my favorite movie?” 

“Are you being serious?” 

“Have I ever broken a bone? Do I like chocolate?”

Arms crossed defensively in front of her chest, she looks at you like she might rear back and spit on you at any moment. Her tiny jaw clenches beneath the tanned veil of her skin, blinking at you in a way that makes you feel like a child. 

“No,” she answers. 

“No what?” 

“No, you don’t like chocolate.” She breaks the cross of her arms and moves her hands to rest at her hips, looking down at you with a fusion of disappointment and disgust. “You’ve broken your arm, you don’t have a favorite color, and to be honest I don’t know the answers to the others… You don’t exactly tell me things like that, anyway… But I know exactly when you were born.” Her pale eyes soften, the quick rabbit-like breaths in her chest slowing and becoming deeper. “It was Halloween. You were early,” she says, and it’s as if she’s suddenly far away from here, “Your father said you’d be early.” 

Something unfamiliar claws at your chest. You watch as the frail woman before you drops her shoulders, and the crystal blue of her eyes fill suddenly with tears. Mouth parted open, searching for something to say, you do nothing as you watch her wipe her face with the back of her knuckle. 

“So yeah,” she huffs bitterly, “I’d say I’m your fucking mom.” 

A warm blush of humiliation creeps its way over your skin, feeling at odds with how wrong you turned out to be. You jerk your head away from her and stare down one of the empty hallways until she finally leaves. 

You always find that, despite everything she’s done, you can never stand to watch your mother cry. Even when you were a little girl, cowering away with your hands pressed tight over your ears to keep from hearing how ugly you are and how stupid and strange, you’d always hated the sight of her tears running down over the razored edge of her jaw. It always felt wrong, and it feels just as wrong now. 

Eyes staring blankly out at nothing, saddened without reason, you still can’t help but feel thankful that you had been so wrong. 

Embarrassment is one thing, but angering the monster they call Pennywise would have been another. 

It kills children for God’s sake. It rips them apart and keeps them to rot like the carcass of a pig swinging from a hook, the bodies of infants and teenagers littered throughout the place it calls home. It kills without mercy, without thought, without a single care of ever being caught; so then why, if confronted head on, would it ever bother to try and spare _ you? _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading!!!


	8. Day Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing changes on your end, but Richie meets up with an old friend.

Over the next day nothing else changes— not really. 

The pain continues to rage. You think maybe it’s better than it was yesterday, but you aren’t yet sure whether or not you’re just getting more used to hurting like this. People can get used to anything, you think, even something like this. 

Your mother continues to help you to and back from the bathroom, bringing you bottles of water from the kitchen and easy-to-eat snacks; but not once does she waver in giving you your pills. She makes you suffer your way through it, flickering between lies and encouragement that women heal faster without painkillers, and honestly at this point you’re too exhausted to feel angry at her. 

You still can’t stand up straight. You still can’t find your phone. You still can’t breathe too deeply, or laugh, or do anything around the house on your own. All that’s really left for you to do is to wait for the day when your drains can come out so that you can finally shower again and take out the sponges shoved uncomfortably into your binder. That, and wait for your husband to come back home. 

  
  


* * *

There’s a rundown old bar just a few blocks away from Richie’s hotel, small and dark and filled with rough-looking men screaming at the television blasting loudly at the end of the room. Richie slides down into a sticky-wet high table by himself and orders a bottle of some overpriced IPA he’s never heard of in his life. He doesn’t care if it’s good; doesn’t even taste it when it goes down. All he really cares about now is drowning the memories of all the chaos he’s caused. 

The waitress stares at him when he asks for another drink, either annoyed and or trying to place where she’s seen him from before in her head. Her hair is thick and russet under the dull lights overhead, her broad face young and pretty when she gives him a nod. 

Richie remembers being young too, the first time he ever came here. He was nineteen years old; the same age his wife was whenever he met her. The thought curdles in his stomach, and when the waitress finally sighs and leaves he decides to push it out of his head. 

At the tender age of almost-twenty there was still so much wonder left to be found in this world, and Richie had searched for it in every bar in the city that wouldn’t turn away his fake ID. He’d fallen in love with the place as soon as they let him in, and he finds that he still loves it every bit as much now as he did way back then. 

It’s the nostalgia, he thinks to himself, the way that it’s still the same as the memory of it in his head. The thin, almost satin-like wisps of cigarette smoke from beer-wet lips of the other patrons slurring drunkenly around him. All the peanut shells lying broken in cardboard-colored fragments over sticky wooden tabletops and swept to nestle at the inverted corners of the baseboard that lines the area of the bar. It’s the sopping mess of an unsalted napkin under an ice-cold drink, the massive window to his left that gives way to a view of the city in the distance, the dulling of the light, and the rain that sweeps its way through the crowds as they all pass wordlessly by. It’s the music and the darkness and the loneliness and the smell, but most of all Richie thinks it’s the way it feels to have someone look him in the face and have no idea who he is. 

He just feels safe when he’s here. Safe, and warm, just like he feels whenever his mate holds him tight in its arms. 

A sharp wince passes over the features of Richie’s face, a sudden torrent of guilt. _ “You’re not like us. You’re a monster, you know? You’re not a person.” _ The memory burns the back of his throat like the liquor in his cup when he orders himself another drink, and he buries his face down deep in his hands. He’d called it a monster. The thing that loves him more than all else, who accepts him for all that he is; all of his lies and mistakes and flaws and regrets— and Richie had looked it right in the eye and told it that it was a monster. As if it was nothing. As if it was the most natural thing he’d ever done. It’d rolled right off of his tongue as easily as it had whenever he was only just a frightened little boy back in Derry. 

And Richie isn’t stupid, okay? He knows it isn’t perfect. The being he loves is a natural born predator that has caused great suffering in the world in order to survive, and he’d be lying through his teeth if he said he didn’t agonize over what it means to have been able to forgive all of it so easily. 

But he hadn’t meant to call it a monster and he knows it, knows that his mouth has always worked faster than his brain and that sometimes he talks only for the pleasure of hearing himself speak, and deep down he prays that Pennywise knows it too. 

Thoughts of the clown drift through the air like smoke in a fast-burning room; candied hearts and half-eaten arms and sewage and bells and murder and sex. He thinks of how it feels to be held in its arms, to lick his tongue over its pointed teeth and to know that it would never once think about hurting him. There’s something in being loved by someone who had once struck terror into his soul, and Richie tries not to psychoanalyze just why that is. His love for Pennywise is the most powerful thing he’s ever experienced in his life, and he prays to God that this love; this blind, terrible, hand-shaking love, never has to come to an end. He wants it to stay blind like this for as long as it can. 

All at once there’s a loud smack against the windowpane at the left of the bar, a sound that Richie first mistakes for a pigeon slamming clumsily into the glass. He turns his head slowly towards the source, and instead finds Eddie Kaspbrak staring back in at him. 

“Oh Jesus Christ,” Richie groans, sternly meeting his friend’s eyes and mouthing, _ “No. Eddie, listen, you— No.” _

It’s been the shittiest week he’s ever had in his life, and all that he’s been through has drained his ability to socialize dry from his being. He can feel the exhaustion darkening the rings beneath his eyes, his arms growing heavy enough that he feels he has to rest them onto the table to keep them from weighing him down. 

He loves Eddie, he really does, he just doesn’t want to have to love him right _ now. _

Hands pressed flat against the glass and face twisted up into an exaggerated glare, Eddie shakes his head like a disappointed mother. His arms drop down to his sides and he slinks away only to come rushing back in through the front doors. 

“Why the _ hell _ didn’t you tell me you were in town again?” Eddie demands heatlessly, and slumps down hard into the stool in front of him. He’s thinner than the last time Richie saw him, his dark eyes piercing against the razor sharp edges of his jaw even when he narrows them into slits. His skin is more pale, the furrowing of his brows like thick smears of ink over his forehead. He isn’t angry, not really; but Richie knows hurt on his friend’s face whenever he sees it. 

“How’d you even know I was in here?” 

“Uh, because we’re friends on _ Snapchat, _you _ jackass._” Eddie pauses to pull the sleeves of his too-big dress shirt up closer towards his wrists, shifting around to get more comfortable in his seat. “You turned your location off but I— Ah come on, Dick, don’t act like you’re not happy to see me. Where’s that good old spontaneity of yours?” 

Richie takes a small sip from his glass before grimacing at the taste. “Must have left it at your mother’s house.” 

Eddie guffaws out a silent laugh, slapping a hand over his flat belly and throwing his head back to feign amusement. “You should save that joke— You know, for your next shitty Netflix special.” 

He leans and peers over Richie’s tall shoulder, stopping the waitress as she passes by, and even though Richie shakes his head, he orders himself a drink. 

“Eds…” he begins. 

“What?”

Richie sighs. “I… Look, man, it’s just— I feel like fucking _ dogshit... _ plus I’ve got another thing tomorrow morning and I… I dunno, man, I just don’t think I can be out here all night.”

“It’s _ not _ all night,” Eddie insists with a sneer, “I’ve ordered one drink.” 

  
  


* * *

They stay out together pretty much all night. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


The bar closes late. They inch deeper towards the sunrise with empty classes piling wide at the edge of their table, slowly-drying wedges of lime and cherry-stems and lemon rinds lying on napkins before them. Even as they match each other drink for drink, Richie finds himself impressed with how much better Eddie seems to be at holding his liquor than himself. 

He remembers all those times when they were both only just teenagers drunk on Colt 45’s out in the woods, how Eddie always seemed to get dizzy and hurl out onto the leaves after only a few drinks. Richie thinks he should probably feel disgusted at the thought, but instead he finds himself smiling fondly. He’s just about to bring it up when Eddie clears his throat and leans forward. 

“So how’s the child bride?” He asks with a smirk, and takes a sip from an unnaturally blue-looking cocktail. 

“Eddie, your mom’s almost thirty years older than me. I really don’t know how you can consider that a child.” 

“My mom’s dead, actually, but thanks for bringing it up twice now within a few hours.” 

“Ah, yeah, that’s right.” Richie winces. “Sorry about that.” 

Eddie shrugs. “S’alright,” he says, only he’s frowning, and his big dark eyes are focused down at the flat of the table. Maybe he’s more drunk than he’d thought. 

It doesn’t matter though, and neither of them dwell. By now they’re both well past the point of catching up, content in sitting together in happily drunken silence as their minds race high above the clouds. Richie thinks about their shared memories; all their time spent together in Maine with the rest of the Losers, and it suddenly occurs to him that the reason they all became so close was because of Pennywise. 

A warm flush makes its way over the numbing of his body as he remembers all the ways it had once terrorized them. He thinks about Pennywise, like a secret, like the most fucked-up and insane secret anyone has ever had in the history of the universe. Then, naturally, he thinks about how he’s never had sex with the clown while he’s drunk. 

Richie wonders to himself if it would. He thinks about whether or not it can even get drunk itself, and if they could ever get trashed together one day and make love all over the house— if it would press sloppy wet kisses to his mouth and tug off his clothes with its claws raking too-hard over his skin. He wonders if it would ever let him top it, let him fuck it the way it fucks him when his wife leaves to drink vodka with her friend. He doesn’t know why he’s never asked. 

His drink is already empty when he raises it up to his lips, and he sees now that Eddie is staring at him, so he feels like he has to say _ something. _

“She’s not that bad.” Richie shrugs and crosses his legs, pretending to stare mindlessly at the television playing at the end of the bar. “She’s just a little uh… You know.” 

Eddie’s ink blot brows knit together before suddenly parting, and Richie can tell just by looking that the other man had forgotten who they were talking about. His face lights up when he remembers, all forced politeness; just the way it was when they’d first started hanging out again during the summer. 

“Beautiful though.” Eddie offers. His lips are wet from the beer, swollen pink from how hard he’s been pressing his mouth against his glass. 

“Yeah she’s definitely uh…” Richie swallows hard. He doesn’t know why. “Beautiful.” 

“Like that actress,” says Eddie, and then he tilts his head. “What was her name? She was in that movie with uh… Oh shit, who was it? Or wait, maybe it was uh...”

Richie stops listening, too drunk to care.

He thinks about Pennywise again because he misses it, and because being around someone else who’d once known it as well is only making him miss it more. Then he wonders, only out of a sudden and odd urge of curiosity, if it ever gets jealous of who he’s with, and if it’d be jealous right now. To love something so vengeful and cruel, a thing that could— if it wanted to— rip his skeleton apart from his skin if only it could see that he’s sitting across from a man he’d once loved. Richie doesn’t love Eddie, though. Not like he did when they were kids. God, he’s drunk. 

“Speaking of wives,” Eddie smiles sheepishly and flips his phone around to show four missed calls from Myra. “Mine’s gonna blow a gasket if I don’t get home before five.”

Richie opens his mouth to make a joke, but then bites down hard on the tip of his tongue. 

“Well uh… Actually hey!” Eddie’s eyes light up and he claps Richie on the outside of his arm. “Why don’t you come by the apartment tomorrow night? Hm? Have a few more beers, come and see Precious..?” 

Precious is the orange pomeranian Richie had gotten for his wife last spring as a surprise to make her feel less lonely all day at the house. He had thought it would be good for her to have something to love and nourish and train, something to help pass the time at the height of Richie’s demanding career, but instead the two had absolutely hated each other right from the very start. When one day Precious valiantly decided to take a chunk out of the back of his young wife’s leg, it’d been Eddie and Myra who’d offered to take him instead. 

He can still hear his own mother’s words ringing out in his head when he’d told her that story: “There’s something deeply wrong with that girl,” she’d said spitefully, “and I think that little dog knew it.” 

Richie snaps out of his thoughts to see Eddie staring back hopefully at him with his phone clenched tight in his hand. “Sure man, yeah. Just give me a call tomorrow and let me know what’s up.” 

Eddie smiles and leans in for a hug before leaving, something Richie is almost certain he wouldn’t have done if he hadn’t been drinking. They fight over the tab, and after Richie inevitably wins the other man makes one last jab about fucking his mother before heading out. 

The air feels weird without him here. Not like— well, not like _ that _— but still weird. Richie’s never really liked being alone when he’s drunk, like he’s wasting something that he can’t put into words. He wants deeply again for someone to talk to, and when he reaches instinctively for the cold glass of his phone tucked away into his back pocket, he remembers just why he’d been avoiding turning it on. 

A blindingly bright apple bursts to life over his screen. Richie almost-panics; shoving it down into his pocket before taking it back out. Then in, then out. His heart races in his chest, dreading the sight of his wife’s name for a reason he cannot explain; but even as messages and notifications come pouring back in, not a single one of them is from her. 

_ Huh, _ he thinks. _ That’s fucking weird. _

His face falls from a look of surprise into a look of sudden concern, furrowing deep the fine wrinkle above his brow. Richie scratches at the stubble over his neck and scrolls through his contacts, deciding at once to bite the bullet and give her a quick call— unwilling to give credit to all the liquid courage flowing its way through his veins. 

The phone rings all the way up to the sound of her monotoned voicemail, one he’d always begged her to change. He closes his tab and heads out into the street with his phone pressed tight to his ear. He calls her again, and still nothing. Again, nothing. After the seventh or eighth call he pinches the bridge of his nose and once more scrolls around to find the name of his wife’s mother, and this time the incessant trilling of the line finally comes to an end. 

“Oh thank God,” Richie breathes, leaning forward to rest his forehead onto one of his hands before someone all but shoves him out of the way. His chest heaves as he forces himself to keep moving forward on the sidewalk, and after a few seconds he’s able to wedge himself into a quieter spot. “Hey there— h-how, how is she?” 

“Richard?” The voice at the other end croaks. “It’s almost two in the morning…”

“How is she?” He presses, too drunk and worried to care about how late it is there or how exhausted she sounds. “Your _ daughter,” _ he reiterates, trying to stay calm, “my _ wife. _How is she uh… How’s she doing? Did everything go okay? Is she home, is she alright?” 

There’s a long drag of silence. 

“Richard,” the voice asks, “are you drunk?” 

“That’s—” Richie’s mouth falls empty. He swallows hard. “I’ve uh, I’ve had a few drinks,” he admits, and cups his chin in his hand, “But… Y’know, I’m not really sure that that… matters...”

“You mean, she hasn’t called you?” His mother-in-law’s voice is clearer this time, as if she’s shaken off the veil sleep from her head. He can hear her sighing as she strains to sit up in bed. 

“No? I uh… I haven’t gotten anything from her since before her surgery.” 

“Well, y’know, that’s her for you… I haven’t heard a thing from her either,” the tired woman grumbles. “Can’t say I’m all that surprised…” 

Every muscle in Richie’s body freezes like ice. A cold, blistering dread settles in the joints of his bones as his frame hardens like a statue carved into the seat of his chair. He almost doesn’t want to ask. 

“I’m sorry— _ what the fuck did you just say?” _

“She hasn’t called me either… Hell, I didn’t even know her surgery had already happened yet. No one told me a damn thing...” 

“No that’s—” Richie bites his lip so hard he sees stars. A hand raises to the back of his head in panic before dropping down to his hip, leaning forward as if he might vomit any second. “No, that’s not fu—” a horrified chuckle bursts out from his lungs; nervous laughter, and even though he knows exactly what’s happened he still doesn’t want to accept it. “You picked her up!” He shouts, more loudly than he had meant to. “You— you were at the surgery center with us, I saw you!” 

“Honey,” his mother-in-law clucks her tongue. “I don’t know who you saw at that surgery center, but it sure as Hell wasn’t me.” 

Another moment of terror passes with Richie standing dumbly in the street. Then he hangs up the phone, and starts off into a sprint faster than he ever thought he was capable of doing. 

_ Oh god, _ he thinks, as he bolts forward to try and find a cab as quickly as he can. _ Oh god, oh shit, oh fuck, this is bad. This is so so so fucking bad. _

He’d thought he had left his poor wife to heal in capable hands, and instead he had left her with Pennywise. It had tricked them both, and it had taken her home to do god-knows-what without anyone around to try and stop it. 

Bile rises in Richie’s throat, trying not to have a panic-attack before he can reach the airport to get home. If she is still alive, and it’s still there with her, then may God have mercy on her soul. 

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


At long last you fall asleep propped up onto the arm of your sofa; riddled with pain, but relieved in knowing your mother is here to help you when you need it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :D


	9. Parking Garage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of triggering and crazy content here. *Scar from Lion King voice* BE PREPAAAAAAARED!

You wake up earlier than you did the day before, and with morning brings a stone-dry tongue and a spine stiff from falling asleep sitting up. The space of your living room is still splashed with pale blue and faded yellow like a watercolor painting. It always feels less sterile like this, less like the carefully disinfected walls of a modern-day asylum and for a soft, fleeting moment; you almost feel happy just being here.

This time when your mother comes quietly downstairs to help you to the bathroom, you ask her if she can help you back upstairs to your room instead. 

The slight, aging woman before you locks her fingers tightly together; hesitation waiting in the little dented ring where her wedding band used to be and knuckles too big for her mouselike hands. For a moment you wonder if maybe this is too difficult, if maybe she’s too small to help you if you tried. Maybe she’ll let you slip between the grip of her delicate palms and you’ll break your neck falling on one of the steps. Maybe she’ll shatter under the weight of you even if you lean desperately against the railing for support. Anything could happen when you’re depending on someone even tinier than you who has rarely ever seemed to care about what happens to your body. You’re just about to tell her to forget you even asked, when she looks at you and says, “fine.” 

Slowly, carefully, your mother guides you up the mountain of your stairs. She keeps her feet planted firmly down on the marble behind you, while steamed rings of condensation leach their way out from beneath your own. You’re sweating like a pig; teeth gnashing, jaw clenching, fingers curling around the railing. You’ve never thought to appreciate how much easier it is to move when you can stand up all the way straight. Not only that, but these past few days of straining to hold up your own body and flexing muscles you rarely ever use have left you feeling so unimaginably sore. By the time you finally make it to the opened arch of your bedroom, you feel as if you might pass out. 

Your bed is massive. When you drop down to all fours to try and crawl your way back to the plush of the headboard it feels like you’re crawling for hours, your elbows trembling and threatening to give out before at last you’re able to maneuver around into a seated position once more. Your mother helps you to prop your knees and back up with some soft pillows, and then at long last you’re free to just rest for a while on the cool sheets of your mattress. 

Now you sit in your room, for the first time in days, but it doesn’t look anything like it did the last time Richie was in it. It feels stained. Thousands of dollars poured into antique brass bookcases and sheepskin chairs and yet it feels worthless in a way you can’t really explain. 

Maybe it’s because when you close your eyes, you can still see that demon bracketing your husband’s body. 

“I miss him,” you say out loud, without meaning to, and you think maybe it’s the exhaustion, or the blurring of sweat in your eyes. You miss him so much it makes you panic. It makes your throat feel tight and your head feel dizzy and the fear of losing him pumps so much desperate love into your heart that you wish you could just gouge it out of your chest. Everything in this world is black and white in your eyes and that’s the way it’s always been. Richie hurts you; he’s a monster, but if he kisses you goodbye and swears the clown will never come back and that he’s sorry for what he’s done; you swear to God you’d cut out your tongue if it meant he’d never stray from you again. “I love him. I just want him to come home.” 

With one toe planted over the imaginary line that separates your room from the hall, your mother stops right in her place. The pearled tips of her nails catch on a carving in the frame, unmoving, unbreathing, and you don’t notice how tightly she squeezes it before dropping her arm back down to her side. 

She says nothing. She starts to leave again, but you’re lonely. You’re so lonely it aches, and without any other connection to the outside world, talking to her feels like the only way to try and make the loneliness— and the pain— stop for just a little while. 

“Has he called you?” You ask hopefully. “Or texted you, or—”

“No.” 

“Could you call _ him?” _

Her hand goes back to the doorframe. This time when she squeezes it you can see the slight twitching of her bicep, like a parasite burrowing down in her arm. 

She doesn’t act like she heard you. You wet your lips with your tongue and repeat yourself once more, “Could you—”

“We can call him later,” she interrupts. 

The abruptness, and the sharp shift of her tone makes your throat feel suddenly tight. Worry works at the back of your mind like a fingernail picking at a fresh scab; almost healed, but still ready to burst like a dam if you pull up a too-stubborn edge. 

“I’d… I’d rather we call him now, honestly.” 

Your mother whips back around towards you. 

There’s an unpleasant smile painted on her otherwise elegant face and you can see the spoiled honey bleeding from her words before she even opens her mouth, “What if he doesn’t want to talk to you? Hmm, Sweetie? What if we take the time to call him, and it turns out he didn’t want to talk to you anyway?” 

“Wouldn’t want to talk…” you repeat the words out loud quietly to yourself, blinking in confusion before twisting your face up into indignant shock, “I’m his— I’m his _ wife. _What on earth makes you think he doesn’t want to talk to me? What did you— Wh-what did you hear?” 

Her face falls into a look of pity. “Honey,” she says gently, and her bottom-lip quirks briefly into a pout. “You’re really starting to act like a spoiled little brat.” 

“What the Hell is your problem? You _ offered _ to come here. You— I never _ once asked _ you—“

Your mother glides across the room so fast it makes your breath hitch in your throat. An old, stray memory of her striking the back of her hand against your jaw for speaking back to her sizzles across your mind and when she reaches out to your face you jerk your upper body back away. Her hand presses cool against the sweat beading above your brow, her palm cupping around the space of your forehead.

“You’re burning up,” she says, twisting her already-thin lips into a jagged pink line. And then she says it, the last thing you expect to hear come falling out of her mouth, “I think it’s time for your pills.” 

You stare at her for a moment, blinking. Pills, as in, plural? Still wondering if she’d truly meant what she said, she leaves and comes back with two distinctly different pills resting in the palm of her hand and a glass of water gripped in the other. 

“Now” she smiles again, pleasantly, ”what was it you were going to say earlier? About missing Richie?” Her body is so thin, so frail, she hardly even dents the foam of the mattress when she settles down near your feet. 

You take the antibiotic first, leaving what you’re certain is some sort of opiate resting alone in the pinked groove of her palm. It sings out to you with a promise of relief, and you snatch it up before you can even really think about it. 

“I uh…” You close your eyes and try to swallow the second pill but you can’t. It lodges at the back of your teeth, slowly dissolving into a foul-tasting slime until you tilt your head back to let it slide down the space between your tonsils. Tears pool in the inner corner of your eye like tiny crystals. 

Your mother looks at you, and there’s something different about her face, and she’s looking at you like she’s waiting for something to happen. 

_This isn’t right,_ you think, and something cold nestles in your gut. _It’s almost as if she’s not even herself anymore. It’s almost as if—_

“Oh fuck.” Your hand flies to the back of your head. “You never call him— You— You never call him Rich—” 

The end of your husband’s name bursts into a terrible gag as your stomach suddenly heaves without warning. It’s a violent act that pulls its way at the internal stitches laced between your abdominal wall so hard that it blinds you. Hot flashes of white sear the backs of your eyes. You try and fail to relax your muscles as another series of convulsions work their way up your throat, almost as if the pill you’d just swallowed had hardened and grown. In fact, in the most terrifying way you can even describe, it almost feels as if it’s trying to climb its way back out of you. 

“You stupid little house pet,” your frail mother’s voice snarls, only she doesn’t look so frail anymore. Unfamiliar, inhuman strength ripples dormant in the tightening of muscles weakened from years of staying indoors. Veins stretch swollen over her arms like venomous snakes, like worms burrowing through the sallow mud of her skin. She bares you her teeth and instead of the blunted edge of porcelain veneers they all end in serrated yellow points. “I wasn’t even going to _ do anything _ to you… I wasn’t even going to _ show myself _to you…” 

Horror races like a shot of adrenaline straight into your heart. Your fingers claw at the sheets when you double forward to try and work out the foreign object lodged in your esophagus, searching, panicking, and to your confusion they come up wet. 

_ Is it blood? _ You wonder, and it is. It is blood; more than you’ve ever seen in your life. It soaks into every finely-stitched thread of your ivory mattress and your silken sheets like something from a nightmare when your hand squelches down through the worst of it. The bed you’d picked out with your husband, the bed where he’d taken your innocence, and the bed where you’d lost your first child; all of it now ruined with dampened scarlet. 

Chaos ensues, and when your lungs open up to let loose a hideous wail the object that’d been trying to work its way out of you finally comes tumbling free. It clunks against the backs of your teeth with a taste like metal before plopping down onto the blood-soaked sheets. Staring at it for what feels like seconds before your brain to register what it is— the tiny band of gold sitting amongst a sea of darkening red. 

It’s made you cough up your own wedding ring. 

“Oh God... I knew it was you… This whole time I— I knew it was you,” you choke out, and suddenly you’re crying. Your arms are shaking from the weight of holding yourself up, and you’re crying like a child. “Oh God…”

“They call me that,” the thing answers smugly. “Though I certainly prefer the name _Pennywise.” _

Still sitting proudly before you, the imposter smiles. It still looks like your mother, all save for the terrible fangs. She lets loose a terrible laugh, a cacophony of giggling and chuckling that rakes across your eardrums like the clawing of a rat. 

“And what do they call _ you?” _It asks, and the laughter suddenly stops. “Useless? Pathetic? Boring? What do people say about you when you’re not around, hm, Pet?” Her head tilts from side to side. “What terrible, horrible, hurtful things do people whisper?” 

You’d give anything to run. You’d give anything to be able to make your way off of this bed and out into the garage to drive yourself to safety, but it’s so close to you that you can smell the roadkill stench of its breath in your mother’s mouth. One wrong move, and surely it could do to you what it’s done to so many other defenseless humans before you. 

“They do call you pretty, that much is true. What a pretty little thing… Such a shame your lover no longer wants you.” 

“Fuck you,” you seethe.

“Ah _there it is.”_ The imposter frowns. “Maybe that’s it. Maybe you’re not so pretty after all… Maybe you’re ugly. Maybe you’ve always been ugly.” 

Its form changes at will, and now it’s suddenly Stacy; beautiful Stacy, with her long caramel hair let down in glossy waves around the frame of her face. Her voluptuous body adorned in only the finest of lingerie, every bit as seafoam green as her irises; with panties pulled up high to squeeze tight the dip of her waist above her hip bones. There isn’t a scar or a mark anywhere to be seen, and for some reason that bothers you. 

“Maybe you surround yourself with beautiful things so that you can feel pretty too...” 

The thing pretending to be Stacy smirks, and climbs back off the bed to take a wide twirl across the white carpet. The doppelgänger spins with grace like a ballerina on a stage, parting away from you before whirling back in. She tumbles clumsily onto the foot of the bed and giggles into her hand, moving her hips from side to side like the thrashing of a playful cat’s tail. 

“What the fuck?!” You croak, pulling your legs up as close as you can towards your body. If it weren’t for the smell, and the pain that blooms through your belly when you gasp in shock; you’d be certain this was a nightmare— a terrible side effect from the antibiotics. 

Stacy’s eyes glint over with yellow. She flashes her perfect white veneers like a predator baring its teeth. Her long pink nails glide over the silk of the sheets, crawling towards you on the mattress like a feline predator skulking for a young rabbit to tear apart with its jaws. 

“Don’t tell me you don’t see it.” The depraved woman half-moans, half-whispers; “The way your husband looks at me... The way _ every man _ in the room always looks at me.” She freezes in place, tanned thighs open wide enough to show the dampness resting at the front of her thong. “The way sometimes— I swear to God— even _ you _ can’t help but look at me.” She draws her tongue up the length of her inner arm, drool smudging the edges of her pastel lipstick; and then bites down hard onto her own unmarked flesh. 

The stench of warmed copper floods the air of the bedroom, blood dripping in abstract stains over the canvas of your sheets. You stare in horror as her head jerks violently to the side, ripping off a mouthful of flesh and swallowing it down hungrily. 

Your mind feels like television static. Your eyes dart to the door, though you know in your heart that you cannot outrun it. At best you could hobble your way to the top of the stairs, but then what, after that? Roll your way down over the unforgiving marble and risk snapping open your still-healing wound? Risk breaking through your bones and cracking open the back of your skull against the railing or a sharp slab of stone? 

So, you can’t fight it, and you can’t outrun it either; but lodged between the choices of a wounded body and certain agonizing death, you decide that trying the latter couldn’t possibly hurt. 

While the thing that’s wearing Stacy is busy devouring what’s left of her arm, your body slides quietly off the bed. Every step without a wall or a hand to hold onto is unfathomable, but with every footstep of your blood-wet feet against your floor deafened by the carnivorous growling and chewing of the creature, you’re able to make it all the way out and through the hallway. 

Standing up on your own feels like a hard-fought battle against some invisible and elastic band stretched down to the mound of flesh between your hip bones. It pulls hard down at the skin below your breasts and all the stitches laced beneath your skin screech with the vague threat of ripping yourself open if you should suddenly stand up too straight. You're forced instead to keep your body craned perfectly forward. The effort weighs at your spine until it feels as if the muscles in your back are going to crack and give out at any second, and it’s only when your fingers latch around the railing at the top of your staircase that you finally find some sense of relief... And then, without any ceremony, you fall suddenly forwards. 

When all at once your knees buckle violently before the heel of your blood-slicked foot gives way to the edge of the step you were on, your body slams down hard. Pain licks through your pelvis like the tongue of a devil and claws its way up through your spinal cord in a loud, fizzling pop in your ears. For a second you can’t even breathe; the impact knocks the wind out of you and leaves you frozen in a sightless hump on the stairs. At long last the agony clears just enough for you to come back down to the reality of the horror raging around you, but instead of the path to freedom that had just been laid out before you, all you can see is the creature. 

It stretches the pretty lips of your only friend back into a terrible smile, and it looks as if her skin is too loose for her skull. Her lower eyelids sag against her eyes, giving way to red and white streaks of gory wet flesh; and it all feels so blasphemous. It feels like this creature is showing you the weak spots in your own delicate life in the most terrifying of ways, all while keeping you grounded by the knowledge that underneath all of it lies Pennywise the Dancing Clown. 

“Asshole,” you snarl, like a lapdog cornered by a wolf offering up one last show of pride before the end. “You’re not what you think. You’re not a god,” another wave of pain ricochets through your bones and you fight back the urge to groan by pinching your lips hard between your teeth before letting go. “You’re just a monster… You’re just _ sick.” _

“Funny,” the shapeshifter smirks, “Richie says the same about you.” 

Anger condenses itself into a roar and rips its way out of you, up to the bell-lanterns hanging from the ceiling and the windows that pour in the quickly brightening light of morning. It gilds your bones with a new sense of strength and urgency, your fingers and backs of your ankles hooking down onto the sharp purchase of the steps. You scoot and slide yourself further down towards the landing; hissing out every time your tailbone thuds against the marble. 

The creature watches you from the Saturn-colored rings of Stacy’s eyes, but only just watches. Even as you make your way down past its long bare legs it doesn’t once make a move to try and grab you. It stands there frozen in amusement with its feet planted firmly apart. It feels now like only just an extension of your house, a beautiful and terrible statue that your husband just simply had to have. 

There’s sweat in your eyes as you force your way down; sweat and tears and maybe even blood, but you can almost taste the warm air of your garage before you even make your way back up to your feet. 

Suddenly it’s laughing again. It’s laughing so hard the walls are bending and you swear to God you’ve lost your fucking mind. You’re all the way to the car before your brain registers the cool chrome of your husband’s door handle. You climb your way inside with anxiety pumping through your arteries, certain the clown is going to rip you apart before the garage door finally opens up. Light bursts into the blinding white space like fire in your eyes, and when you push it to start and the engine comes roaring to life, you can’t help but begin to sob. 

You shouldn’t be driving, shouldn’t be sitting up like this and putting so much strain onto your wound; but it seems like the only option you really have. The strain pulls out fat tears of hurt as you rush as fast as possible through the slow stretch of the city. With every second brings more obsidian dread, convinced that with every glance into your rear view mirror you’re going to see its awful face staring back at you, but it never happens. You tear your way into the parking garage of the hospital in— what you hope— is still only one piece. 

There’s no one around. The car is still running when you tumble your way out, forearm clutched firmly down over your belly as you pray desperately that you haven’t ripped open any of your stitches. The dirty, salted ends of your hair hang in your face as you limp forward towards the entrance waiting like salvation in the distance; and like every predictable horror movie you’ve ever seen in your life, the creature suddenly reveals itself to you once more. 

This time it comes wearing no disguises. This time it is only itself, only the clown, only Pennywise. 

A laugh purrs in its throat. Its yellow eyes bleed red, and though you are a tall woman yourself the body of the clown towers high above you in a filthy gray suit. It looks like both something from long ago, and something from beyond this world both at once. It’s terrible, and it’s wonderful, and it feels so surreal to finally see it again in the flesh. Your feet shuffle to the side to try and move past it, but it blocks you, like a moon blocking out the sun. 

You wish this beast would just die right here. You wish that your hatred were a weapon and you could bring it to its knees with the blow of your anger itself, but the blade of your fury is dulled by the poisoned mess of your fear and you know that there’s nothing you can do to stop it from hurting you as much as it wants. You didn’t ask for this. You were content— well, maybe not content, maybe you were drinking yourself out of consciousness and biting your wrists and wanting to cut out your belly to keep yourself from remembering that your time spent in this marriage is painful and real and fleeting and that you are not a beautiful mannequin but instead a monster raging in the forever-scarred skin of a housewife who can’t even keep a man who’s twice her own age and you love him you do you love the way the past feels in your head and you’d cut out even more of yourself if it meant that someone would finally love you for all the sewage that runs through your veins, but _ this? _You didn’t ask for this. You didn’t ask for this devil to come into your life. 

“How can you even want this?” You ask bitterly, “The way you see people, it’s like— it’s like we’re your—”

“Prey?” The alien quirks an unnatural brow. “I’m the last of a dying race, Little Buddy. Life would be so _ boring _ if I were to never take any of you as mates.” 

“He’s not your fucking mate! He’s my husband; he’s with me! Get your— Get your own goddamn man!”

“Maybe after I grow tired of fucking yours.” The clown grins smugly, moving in a bit closer towards you. “Richie was your first, wasn’t he? That must sting...” 

Your body sways under the force of the hate raging inside of you, and you collapse over your own stumbling feet to the cold hard ground beneath your bare feet. 

“That must sting too…” Pennywise remarks cruelly, and now you can’t get up. No matter what you do, you can’t seem to find the strength to lift yourself up. 

A strangled groan escapes your lips. You pull yourself instinctually into a tight little ball, just in case the clown decides to kick you with the swing of its massive white boots or lash out at you with the claws that you’re certain lie dormant beneath the soft fingers of its gloves. 

“You should hear the sounds he makes when I fuck him.” The monster’s eyes burn. Its hair looks different than it had the first time you saw it, more red, like a flame burning on top of its head. “I bet you’d make such beautiful noises too, if only I had the chance to sink my teeth into your flesh… All that salt… All that _ fear…” _

_ Get up, _ you beg yourself, as Pennywise suddenly drops down to its knees before you. It crawls over you like a wave, not touching you, but showing you that it most certainly holds your life in its hands. Your eyes clench shut. _ Get up or you’re dead, and you’ll never see your husband ever again. _

“I promised my lover I wouldn’t touch you, that much is true… Though in the end I suppose it won’t matter. I could wreck anything upon you and Richie would still have me. Murder… Torture… Violence...” the clown pauses with its mouth parted in silence, glancing down between your bodies, and then it lets out a little huff of air in amusement at the way your eyes open wide and your face flushes red. “I could do anything I wanted to you before your husband comes home, and as long your heart lies cold in your chest; Richie will be nothing but _ thrilled.” _

“Your threats don’t fucking scare me— not now. You could’ve hurt me in my house… You could hurt me now,” your head shakes, “but you won’t.”

“I won’t?” 

“No,” you answer, your voice cracking like glass, “You won’t… You see— I get it now… That whatever Richie is… Whatever Richie wants… We both know he won’t want you if you kill me.”

“I killed his best friend’s brother, and he still loves me after that,” The clown shrugs. “What’s one more dead body among _soulmates?” _

“Richie’s not your goddamn soulmate!” You scream, and pain shreds through your core. 

“Oh, but he _is,_ Child, _he is…_ He is mine and I am his… We are one heart in two bodies, but I wouldn’t expect a thing like you to understand a love like ours.” 

“A thing like me?”

“A thing with no heart at all.”

You both glare at each other through the darkness of the parking garage like cats ready to rip each other apart before the proud line of its shoulders falls down into a disappointed sigh. 

“But— alas,” the being stands back up onto its mighty feet, “I promised him I wouldn’t harm you, and I won’t; and after this, I suppose I will have punished you well enough.” 

It stretches a hand out towards you. 

“Punished me? Go fuck yourself!” 

Pennywise rolls its eyes. It splays its fingers out wide, beckoning for you to take it so that it can pull you up onto your feet; but you’re too angry, too proud. It’s tortured you for days, only to now act as if it has all been some harmless display of dominance. 

“When I offer a human my help, I do not do so lightly,” it warns, its words the rattling of a snake’s beaded tail. “Take. My. Hand.” 

Your refusal is causing it anger, and if you have nothing else, then at least you have this. You stare at the hand waiting before you as if it were covered in bile, remarking it with cold disinterest. 

“Richie was right,” Pennywise huffs incredulously, “you _ are _ stupid.” 

For a quick, blissful moment, you don’t realize just what it’s about to do to you with its mind. You don’t understand the implications of its gaze resting firmly on the hem of your shirt, but then you hear something popping. The ignorance is gone, and you realize, with terror, that the sound you hear is your sutures— all popping open across the width of your belly. 

The pain eats you alive. It ruins you, an agony so extreme it feels as if you’re losing an innocence and naivety about just how much hurt this world can inflict upon a human being— stripping you away of everything there is to be felt but the ripping apart of your own skin. Your bandage goes red, like a line of roses in a snow-covered field, and you’re thankful that it doesn’t take long for the shock of what’s happening to knock you out cold. 

Torn wholly open in an unmoving slump on the ground, the last thing you see before you black out are people running towards you from the sidewalk of the surgery center. The darkening rings of your eyes go to the clown, but the strangers helping you don’t even seem to notice that it’s there. 

  
  



	10. Like A Corpse

The first thing Richie does, upon finding out the extent of what has happened to his wife, is vomit. There’s no warning, no pooling of spit in his mouth; he just opens his mouth up right there in the hallway of the hospital and empties his stomach all over the tiles. By the time he’s finished his face looks so green that a doctor passing by nearly tries to admit him as well. 

They say they’ve sedated her. They tell him that she’d woken up from her surgery thrashing and screaming about something unseen; and Richie can only take a wild guess as to just what that was. 

His hands twitch when he raises them up to his mouth, to the peppered stubble growing coarse over his face. His shoes squeak against the tiles below his chair, back and forth, as he slides his feet and bounces his knees to try and ease his mind. They leave him alone in her room with only his thoughts, only the sound of machines beeping so loudly he wishes his eardrums would burst and he’d never have to hear them ever again. 

She looks like a corpse. Tubes in her throat, color bled from her skin, and her joints crumpled in awkwardly in her bed. His wife has always been the most stunning woman in any room she’s ever been in, and yet, right now she hardly looks as if she’s even still alive. Richie drops his gaze down to his watch, the same one she had once given him, and he wonders just what he would have done if she hadn’t have survived. 

Would he have killed himself? He thinks he would have. He thinks he would have ended it right there so that he never had to think about how much all of this was his fault. 

He glances up again, torturing himself with the sight of her. This time, suddenly standing right by his young wife’s bed, is Pennywise in the flesh. 

Richie’s up so fast he knocks his chair down behind himself. His eyes bulge out wide in his skull, a panic far worse than anything he’d felt on the ride here rising in his chest. 

“Get the fuck away from me,” he hisses, backing himself up into the corner and wedging himself there. 

The clown’s eyes shine in the dark, but other than that its features look void of any emotion at all. The painted lines of its face are dark and defined like the markings of a cheetah, a feline predator truly alive in the swaying of its shoulders when it takes a step forward. Maybe it’s annoyed, or bored, or smoldering with ravenous anger; Richie certainly can’t tell. Usually he can, usually he can read the subtle changes in its demeanor like words written on a page, but not here. Not right now. 

“Spare me this performance.” Pennywise snarls its teeth and wraps a gloved hand around a handle at the side of the hospital bed. “I know you aren’t afraid of me.”

“Bullshit,” Richie’s voice squeaks. 

“It’s true. You know it to be true. I would never harm you.” It shakes its head. “Not while you’re mine.” 

Horrified at the dark implication lying coiled at the foot of its words, Richie’s hands curl up into fists at his sides. For the first time in months he doesn’t feel like a man arguing with his lover, but rather a child standing up to the boogeyman hiding in the dark void beneath his bed. He wishes his friends were here to stand beside him, to strengthen his heart and make him feel brave; but when he searches inside of that thick red muscle pumping deep in his chest, all he finds is more fear. 

Richie follows the bend of the creature’s arm down to his sleeping wife, to the thin bulge of her bandage beneath her gown. All that pain she must have endured in the time it spent in their house, all that horror, all that despair. She had told him she’d loved him just before he left, and when he thinks of the trails of black streaming from her eyes he wishes to God he would have stayed. 

He raises his eyes up to meet the clown’s. This time, it is anger that finds a home within him as well. 

“You told me you weren’t gonna hurt her,” the words split through Richie’s teeth. “You told me you were gonna go back to Derry to sleep— and you would leave her the fuck alone until I got home,” he cocks his head, furious, but still trying desperately to understand. “Did you do this to punish me? To get back at me— For saying that— For saying you’re a fucking monster the other night at the beach?” 

“How could it be a punishment if you truly do not still care for her?”

“Because I—! Bec— She’s my wife, man! She’s my fucking wife! She’s a fucking person with thoughts and feelings and you just— y-y-you—” His mouth searches for words. His eyes search Pennywise’s face for any semblance of remorse, and he finds the truth of it in the way that it turns to look down at his wife lying unmoving beneath the white hills of her sheets. There’s hatred in the golden rings of its irises. It looks at her as if she is nothing more than an insect passing through its home, a tiny blonde mouse just waiting to be ensnared in a trap and then tossed outside to rot. The truth lays itself out so plainly before him that when it hits, Richie doubles forward to rest his hands on his knees. 

“Oh God…” The room blurs. He can feel himself spiraling into panic, disgusted and bewildered for all that he has now caused. “What you did, you— It wasn’t revenge… It wasn’t calculated… You did it because it felt good to you...” Tears pool in his eyes. “You did it because,” he chokes on his words, “because it’s in your nature. Because at the end of the day, of every single fucking day… this is just what you are.”

A pang of hurt slaps across the alien’s face. It’s brief but he sees it, a star shooting across the sky so fast you wonder if it had even been real. Pennywise crosses the room like a glitch, phasing out of space and reappearing only an inch away from Richie’s nose. It opens its jaws, which had almost always smelled like leather and salt, and the stench that seeps out from its mouth now reeks of blood and decay. 

“I would choose my next words carefully,” the being warns, curling its upper lip to flash the sharp edges of its teeth. 

Still curled forward, Richie scoffs. “Oh yeah? Or else what, huh? You just said you weren’t gonna hurt me— Was that a lie too? Gonna pretend to be my mom, Penn? Gonna rip me open like a goddamn bag of Funyuns?!”

“I wasn’t even going to touch the nasty little thing,” it insists. “I was going to simply wait for you to come home—”

“Horse shit.”

“— all in plain sight, and I was going to leave her alone to be miserable in peace.” 

The hair on its head stands on end like an angry dog pulling at its leash, and Richie wonders just how much restraint it has left for him in its being. 

It wasn’t like this when it wasn’t happening in front of him, when his lover’s cruelty was only urban legend and fogged-over memories of boyhood in Maine. This is different in the most, in that for the very first time, it is now finally real. He thinks of the bodies found on the rocks of the barrens, of all the missing posters stapled to telephone poles and scattered outside of grocery stores. He thinks of Bill’s brother, of the hole in his friend’s heart that his death— his murder— left behind. He thinks of how thankful he’d felt only just hours ago for having been able to be blind. 

“You know what?” Richie shrugs, feigning a frown so wide it stretches across the width of his cheek. “On second thought, I don’t give a shit why you did it. All I know is don’t ever wanna fucking see you ever again.” 

Instead of reaching into his chest and ripping out his spine— a thing he had genuinely feared upon hearing the words come pouring from his mouth— the clown offers the man only but a cold glare. It’s colder even than that night on the beach, and all at once it crosses its arms before vanishing out into nothing.

Pennywise leaves Richie alone, once more; with only the beep, beep, beeping of the machines— louder than ever before. 

**Author's Note:**

> For the sake of this fic, Pennywise is in fact able to travel outside of Derry but he isn’t as powerful when he does because this is a fanfic and I can do whatever I want including making him Richie Tozier’s secret lover you can’t stop me there is no God here to observe this


End file.
